Staff care, hiring, and the 'no freak out' policy

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Brandon Boyd, Executive Pastor at Quay Church in Windermere, Florida—one of the fastest-growing churches in the country. What began as a struggling congregation marked by multiple splits has experienced dramatic renewal and growth since a 2022 replant under Lead Pastor Luke Lazon.

Is your church experiencing rapid growth that feels both exciting and overwhelming? Wondering how to scale systems, structure, and culture without losing spiritual health? Tune in as Brandon shares how Quay Church is stewarding momentum while building clarity, accountability, and lasting impact.

• From flat structure to scalable leadership. // When Brandon arrived in 2024, Quay had grown from 400 to 1,500 people, but its internal structure hadn’t caught up. Meetings were crowded, decisions were unclear, and Sunday services were running long due to lack of coordination. The church had been operating as a flat organization where everyone contributed to every decision. That worked at a smaller size but became chaotic during rapid growth. Quay implemented tiered leadership levels: elders at 50,000 feet guarding mission and doctrine, an executive team at 40,000 feet solving forward-facing challenges, and a lead team at 30,000 feet ensuring weekly ministry execution. This created clarity in decision-making and allowed the church to scale effectively.
• Systems in many places leads to excellence. // A guiding philosophy Brandon has is SIMPLE—Systems In Many Places Leads to Excellence. Brandon introduced tools like Asana for project management, Slack for communication, and Otter for meeting documentation. Agendas are shared ahead of time, action items are clearly assigned, and meeting notes are converted into trackable tasks. Each meeting is defined by purpose—innovation, execution, or decision—so participants know what is expected. The tools support clarity, but the real goal is alignment and accountability.
• Guarding culture during rapid growth. // Growth creates urgency that can easily become chaos. Quay combats this with clearly defined staff values: Kingdom over castles. Nimble over fragile. Sled dogs over show dogs. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Burn the ships. These values act as decision filters. Everyone owns the broader mission, not just their ministry lane. Staff lead by example—serving first, giving first, even parking farther away to prioritize guests. A 2026 staff covenant outlines expectations for spiritual leadership, generosity, and ownership, ensuring alignment as the church continues to grow.
• Spiritual health beyond attendance growth. // While attendance has surged to nearly 2,700 adults weekly, Brandon points to transformation as the real marker of health. Spontaneous altar ministry has become a defining feature of services—not manufactured, but Spirit-led. People regularly respond in repentance, prayer, and life change. One man publicly confessed infidelity and committed to reconciliation. The church just celebrated 188 baptisms last year, reinforcing that growth is not just numeric but spiritual.
• Leading through overwhelm. // Brandon closes with a vulnerable reminder: rapid growth can be overwhelming. Leaders must acknowledge that reality rather than pretending to be superhuman. Honest conversations with lead pastors, elders, and trusted peers help prevent burnout. When God calls, He equips—but leaders must stay transparent and supported during demanding seasons.

To learn more about Quay Church, visit quaychurch.org or follow @quaychurch on social media. You can connect with Brandon on Instagram at @bgboyd.

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Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Risepointe

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Well, the team over at Risepointe can help! As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead you to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Your mission should not be held back by your building. Their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to incorporate creative design solutions to help move YOUR mission forward.

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Episode Transcript

Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in today, and you’re definitely going to be rewarded for that. Today, we’re talking with a church that I like to say has platinum problems. Like every church wants to be a fast-growing church. They want to be, or you’ll hear leaders talk about in a season where they’re growing, where we’re capturing a church and a leader in the midst of that right now.

Rich Birch — And I’m really excited to talk to Brandon Boyd. He is at Quay Church in Windermere, Florida. This is a fast-growing church. It’s one of the fastest-growing churches in the country. He serves as the XP. And I’m really looking forward to unpacking the story a little bit. Tell us a little bit about Quay and the history there, the story, what’s going on. Tell us, bring us up to speed.

Brandon Boyd — Yeah, Rich, thanks for having me on the podcast today. Just such a joy to chat with you and tell all the incredible things that the Lord’s doing at Quay. So I’ve only been at Quay for about like 15 months. And so previously, I’m a native Texan, grew up in Dallas, served my home church in Dallas and another church in the Dallas, North Dallas area. And then the Lord transplanted us all the way out here to Orlando, Florida – Windermere, suburb of Orlando, which is on the north side of Disney World, which is pretty fun. And so I’m married and I’ve got three daughters. I live in a sorority, basically, which is really fun.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Brandon Boyd — And so when the Lord said, hey, I’m taking you to Windermere, was pretty easy yes for our family, for what the Lord had for us. And so, you know, Quay is a little bit of a replant. And so our church was initially started in the early 2000s and went through like two or three church splits. And we shouldn’t really have a church just because of those splits and what was occurring at that time period.

Brandon Boyd — And I would say our church got replanted in 2022 when Luke Lazon, who was our young adult pastor at the time when he became the lead pastor. At that time, there was basically like 400 people that were calling our church home. We were known as Lifebridge Church at the time.

Brandon Boyd — And then you fast forward to when I got here in May of 2024, we had grown to 1,500 adults. And then this past weekend, we had 2,700 adults with us, and then about 500 kids and students. And so it’s just been a wild ride these last three years. And I’ve just been fortunate to be a part of it in the past like 15 months.

Rich Birch — Well I, yeah, I want to acknowledge that, you know, that kind of growth is, it’s exciting and fun and and have lived through similar seasons in the past, but there is also comes with a lot of challenges and a lot of like real world problems. And so I appreciate that you’ve taken time to, you know, help us think through these issues today. And even just before the call started, we were talking about stuff literally from last weekend that was like, well, there’s a new problem. We got to figure that one out. So excited for this.

Rich Birch — Well, let’s talk about when you stepped into the role. So you you you arrive, you know, the church is obviously growing, had experienced incredible growth in the couple years before you got here, went from 400 to 1500. When did you realize that maybe not just that it was growing, but maybe the qualitative, the kind of what kind of growth Quay was having was was maybe a little bit different and was kind of going to inform the next couple of years. Help us think through what was that like when you first arrived, unpack that, you know, those first weeks or months.

Brandon Boyd — Yeah. So my my first Sunday was Mother’s Day in 2024. And on that day, we had communion, we had baptism, we had a parent-child moment. And I looked up to us and I said, we’re just not communicating well. So we can’t have all these elements in a worship gathering taking place at the same time.

Brandon Boyd — And so I started talking with our XP over worship and creative. And I just said, help me understand your planning process through the week. And so I took that first week just to ask a lot of questions like, how are we sitting together? How are we working together? What’s not working? And then what we started to do was start to organize our meetings behind the scenes. So we really took that summer of 2024 and start putting some processes in place that would help us kind of scale up well.

Brandon Boyd — And part of that was we use a project management tool on the back end to make sure that everything is operating well. We use Asana. And some of this is what I learned in Dallas with our team there. And I took that and brought it here and scaled it. And so everything runs through a project through us on the back end. Worship is a project. All of our events are a project. And so everybody knows what is expected of them today. What is expected of them tomorrow, two weeks from now. And it’s also our accountability tool.

Brandon Boyd — So back to that first Sunday, when we realized that we had all these things going on, Luke still preached for 40 minutes. And then they looked at me and said, Hey, we’re just always over time on our gatherings. Well, everything’s got to be spelled out. And so that was an initial thought that I said, this can’t be the Wild West anymore.

Rich Birch — Right.

Brandon Boyd — Because of the rapid growth that we had going on, knowing that we’ve got natural growth cycles coming up, whether it’s in the fall when school starts, and in January. And that’s kind of what we saw happen at Quay in that first year in 2024.

Rich Birch — Yeah, there’s a lot there I want to unpack. And I want to get to meetings and and project management. I want to really dive into some of those details. But one of the things I’ve been, as I’ve kind of watched from afar, what’s happened at Quay, you guys have done a good job balancing the past, even just how you talked about there, kind of balancing, talking about the past, but then you know, projecting forward and kind of casting vision for the future, how did the church’s past really approach your, or has that, ah you know, kind of ah impacted your leadership as you’ve approached leading here in the, even in the current, or as you think to the future, how are those two connected together?

Brandon Boyd — Yeah, I think just an axiom I live by is I always want to speak respectfully about the past, be honest about what’s going on presently, and optimistically about the future.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Brandon Boyd — And so we’re super grateful for the people that went ahead of us that helped start this and plant this church way back in the early 2000s, and then had the foresight to kind of buy this piece of property in Windermere.

Brandon Boyd — We’ve got part of our property is not developed yet. And we had a developer show up the other day that offered $5 million dollars for our grass kind of parking lot where we’re going to expand our campus on. But I couldn’t imagine unloading and reloading everything into an elementary school or a high school right now. So we’re super grateful for the people that went ahead of us, not only the pastoral leadership, elders, but also the people that called this church home, that hung on for the hope that something better was coming in the future.

Brandon Boyd — And so they’ve been on this wild ride, up and down of, splits, attendance, differences, whatever else, but knowing that, you know, there ought to be a church in this part of Windermere, that there should be a gospel presence, especially in a place that’s so known for entertainment. Like you can stand on our roof at nighttime and see the fireworks from Disney World.

Rich Birch — Right.

Brandon Boyd — If the wind, if the wind is blowing just right, you can hear the whistle from the train at the Magic Kingdom. I mean, that’s how close we are.

Rich Birch — Right.

Brandon Boyd — So for a spot in Orlando that’s known for entertainment, why shouldn’t there be a place that is a flag spot for the gospel. And so knowing that those people went before us, knowing that you’ve got people moving here on a daily and weekly basis, we appreciate that, but we also got to look forward to the future.

Brandon Boyd — And so we had this opportunity to kind of rebrand our church. So our church was named after our young adult ministry Quay. And a quay is a literal thing. Like it’s a place where ships unload and reload their cargo. And that’s just a metaphor for the church – that the church a place where people can unload the things and that are burdensome and get refilled up with the message of Jesus and take that out into their places of influence, to their schools, to their work places.

Brandon Boyd — And so when we cast that vision early in 2025, the people that had been here when all the ups and downs of the church really saw, like this is the moment. And then they saw this surge of people that were coming in to hear the gospel message. We baptized this past year 188 people.

Rich Birch — That’s great.

Brandon Boyd — That’s adults, children, kids.

Rich Birch — Fantastic.

Brandon Boyd — I got to baptize my own daughter this past year, which is super exciting. But to see life change. So you go from this really small remnant that was left to see this surge and explosion, to see people, their lives being transformed for the gospel, I think is how they’ve just seen, all right, what’s next? What’s next, Lord, for us? And we’ve got this phrase here that stewardship is our responsibility, that we’re just merely stewards of what the Lord has provided to us.

Rich Birch — Right. Good.

Brandon Boyd — And so we’re just stewarding this moment. And we really want to set it up well for the people that follow me, that follow Pastor Luke, that follow any of us, that we want to leave it better than we found it.

Rich Birch —Yeah, that’s so good. And I just want to honor you for how you guys even publicly are handling all that. Because I think particularly with the growth that you’ve seen, it would be easy to be like, man, isn’t it incredible what’s happening now, but even kind of just forgetting what’s gone in the past. So, you know, honor you for what you’re doing there. I think that’s that’s incredible.

Rich Birch —Well, let’s get back to some of those rhythms. So one of the things you talked about was like, hey, we realized, oh, maybe these, ah you know, the meetings, we just, we didn’t have the right, maybe the right flow of information.

Brandon Boyd — Yeah.

Rich Birch — So let’s talk through what did that look like? How did you how did you pick that apart, diagnose the problem maybe first? And then how did we make some shifts towards the kind of system you’re currently running?

Brandon Boyd — So our organization was a flat organization. So when I got here, everybody was involved in every single decision. Everybody, like there was a weekly staff meeting where everybody was there and they were pitching ideas left and right about what we need to do on Sunday, what we need to do for our student ministry programming. And then we had a weekly meeting where everybody was involved with all the event processes and everything else.

Brandon Boyd — And so I think another obstacle that we were trying to work past was Luke went from, like I said, young adult pastor to lead pastor. So he went from a peer on the hall to the boss. And so I knew that we had to put some structures in place and we had to scale the organization, and had to put some meeting structures around that. So we created an executive team meeting that meets on Mondays. We created a lead team that meets on Tuesdays. And we put people in those meetings that had influence or had certain gift sets, or we took Working Genius. And so we’ve kind of started to strategize our meetings around Working Genius and putting people in meetings where they thrive.

Brandon Boyd — So if they’re an innovator, if they’re a wonderer, then we may need to put them on the front side of work. If they’re more of an implementer and they’re more of somebody that can get the tasks done, they don’t need to be in all these meetings. So what we’ve tried to do moving forward is really name what the meeting is before it’s even called, so people know what the expectation is.

Brandon Boyd — So what what we’ve tried to do over the past year is really provide clarity and expectation.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
 

Brandon Boyd — So when somebody comes to a meeting, they know what they need to prepare, but then they also know what their expectation is in the conversation.

Rich Birch — That’s great. A couple things I want to unpack there. First, ah for listeners, we had Patrick Lencioni on talking about Working Genius. If you should go back and listen to that episode, if you don’t know Working Genius, it’s a fantastic tool. Here’s an example of a church is actually putting it into practice, not just like reading the book and putting it on the shelf.

Rich Birch — So can you pull apart the, when you say executive team and lead team, the kind of Monday and Tuesday, how do you, what’s the like 30 second definition between those two and their roles and responsibilities between those two groups and who’s kind of comprises those, those teams.

Brandon Boyd — Yeah. So our exec, well, it really starts with our elder team. So for a period of time, like our elders had to be really involved just because of the nature of what was going on in our church. But they have since decided that they needed to fly at a higher level. So we’ll we’ll just talk 50,000 feet.

Brandon Boyd — So the elders are at the 50,000 feet. They’re really guarding the mission and vision of the church.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Brandon Boyd — And then you come down to the executive team, which flies at 40,000 feet. And they’re really tasked at making sure that from an executive level, we’ve got you know all the the problems that need to be solved, that we’re looking at the vision forward, that we’re not only looking at the current week, but we’re looking six weeks out. We just wrapped up Christmas. We’re already talking about Easter. and We’re talking about Christmas already for 2026.

Brandon Boyd — And then you step down to the lead team. They’re at 30,000 feet. And what they’re doing is making sure that our ministries are humming and running on a weekly basis and making sure that those budgets, ministry resources, calendars, everything are executing.

Brandon Boyd — So what we’ve done is the executive team is obviously our lead pastor. We’ve got myself as executive pastor. We’ve got the other executive pastor of worship and creative, Justin Melton. And then we added our spiritual formation pastor, Mike Brook on that team.

Brandon Boyd — Our lead team is the executive team, plus our project manager, plus our young adult pastor. Cause young adults are so important and and vibrant to our house.

Rich Birch — Sure.

Brandon Boyd — And that’s kind of like the impetus for the rebirth of our church. And then we’ve got like people in charge of kind our crews, which is our small groups and then kind of our volunteer teams in that. And so that’s kind of those teams.

Brandon Boyd — And then out of that, you’ve got ministry teams that run on a weekly basis. And then our staff gathers for once a month where we pray together. we have some fun together. We eat lunch. And so let’s kind of put some meeting structures that we put in place and the purpose of them.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool.

Brandon Boyd — So we’ve kind of walked through 50, 40, 30, 20, 10, all the way down to zero. So everybody knows what the purpose of each of those meetings are.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I’m assuming so you go executive to lead and then is there then like a weekly team meeting? So each of those people that are on the executive, or on the the lead team, they would then have their, you know, kind of trickle that down that information throughout the organization.

Brandon Boyd — Yep.

Rich Birch — Is that what that looks like basically?

Brandon Boyd — Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.

Brandon Boyd — You’re exactly right. So those ministry teams meet on a weekly basis.

Rich Birch — Right.

Brandon Boyd — And so, yep.

Rich Birch — Okay. One other thing you said that caught my attention, which is a small, it’s like, since we’re sticking with the the quay metaphor, the the nautical metaphor, it’s a small, like a rudder. It’s not that big, but it’s it’s a huge deal. Actually, people knowing what we’re talking about in the upcoming meeting and being prepared for those meetings can be transformational in an organization. So talk me through what does that look like? What’s your expectation? And then when it’s running perfect, what is the kind of goal that we’re, we’re trying to go towards on that, you know, on that front, obviously that we don’t, we don’t bat a hundred, but I’m not even sure I’m mixing metaphors. Now we don’t bat a thousand. I think it is.

Brandon Boyd — Yeah.

Rich Birch — What is that? You know, what, what does that look like?

Brandon Boyd — Yeah. If you’re batting a hundred, I think you’re batting pretty bad.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Brandon Boyd — And so what what we try to do, I mean, we’re not afraid of tools. And so we use several different tools.

Rich Birch — Right.

Brandon Boyd — Already talked about Asana. We use Slack for internal communication. So we we really try to strive that we’ve got to get our agendas out ahead of time and then understand if there is an action item in the agenda so that people can understand what’s expected of them.

Brandon Boyd — We use another tool called Otter that helps make minutes and notes. And then we disseminate those to the people so they know what’s expected of them. Otter does a great job of recognizing voices and then they’ll also tag people. Then we take that and dump it into Asana.

Brandon Boyd — So if we’re having, we’ll just use our student ministry. If we’re having like our weekly Wednesday night student ministry programming for middle schoolers, they’ll know what’s expected of them from what our middle school director is speaking on to what’s expected from production to what’s expected from our creative team to what’s expected from our communications team on the website, social media, some of those other things.

Brandon Boyd — And so we use, we’re we’re not shy to use tools.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.

Brandon Boyd — And so we use those tools just to make sure that everybody understands what’s expected before the meeting and after the meeting.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I’m an Otter user as well.

Brandon Boyd — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Use it in my coaching. And it’s it’s ah it’s transformed my own personal interaction with the churches I work with. And then I’ve actually had a number of churches pick it up and start using it. I had an XP, this was before Christmas, texted me after just one week. He was like, dude, this has changed our game because it’s like having someone, it’s like in every meeting having like an incredibly detailed assistant that’s writing notes on everything that’s going on and they don’t they don’t miss anything or miss very little, which is, you know, incredible.

Rich Birch — So now let’s talk about so from there. So like I get the idea you’re using Asana, get that Slack, Otter, tools are together. How do you ensure that things keep simple and streamlined rather than becoming con, you know, yeah really complicated and, you know, were just bolting on stuff. How do you think about those issues as, as you’re growing?

Brandon Boyd — So I’ve got a phrase that I learned at one of my churches in Texas, and it’s actually an acronym. It’s for SIMPLE. So, systems in many places leads to excellence.

Brandon Boyd — So we just try to keep things simple. Like we launch a fourth gathering here. We’re at max capacity on Sunday mornings with all three of our gatherings from 8:15 and 11:45. So we’re we’re launching a fourth one here in a few weeks at Sunday night at 5 p.m. And so if we just take what’s replicable from the Sunday morning experience and add it to the the evening experience. But it’s just the basic thing.

Brandon Boyd — So yes, we’ve got tools. Yes, we’ve got Asana. Yes, we’ve got Slack… [inaudible] to call a stand-up meeting and just to make sure everybody’s understand what’s going on and just have a conversation. Like my door, I’ve got an open door policy. And if my door’s open, just come on in and ask a question to make sure that you understand what’s going on.

Rich Birch — Right.

Brandon Boyd — I think it’s just the basic thing.

Rich Birch — Right.

Brandon Boyd — A lot of times we can hide behind email, we can hide behind Slack, we can hide behind text messages, but we’ve we’ve just got to be more proactive than reactive and say…hey, if you don’t understand something, then it’s okay to come ask a question because I may miss something because we’re involved at a different level.

Brandon Boyd — And so what we try to do is just make sure that we’ve got avenues for people to ask questions, whether that’s having quick standup meetings before we run to a big initiative. We also run things where it’s kind of an integration meeting. So if we’re looking at Christmas, Easter, if we’re looking at another objective where we’re going to get everybody on the table and we’re going to walk through a checklist just to make sure even the most small, minute details are taken care of.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Brandon Boyd — Part of it is like we’re a stickler for excellence. So we would say excellence is our standard. And part of that is just kind where we are with Disney and Universal and theme parks all over everywhere that everybody that goes to our church already has an excellence experience whenever they go to that. So why can’t they have the same excellence level when they come to church on Sundays?

Rich Birch — Sure. Yeah.

Brandon Boyd — So.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. A big issue in growing churches is, you know, the people side. So it’s related to what we’re talking about. But as you’re scaling, you know, your team has to continue to grow as people. They have to, you know, step up their game as growth has accelerated. How are you accelerating whether people are operating at their best contribution? They’re kind of really leaning in, you know, and they’re kind of performing at their highest. How how have you been able to keep an eye on that?

Brandon Boyd — Yeah, I think this a growing thing for us. I’ve got a “no freak out” policy.

Rich Birch — Right. Good.

Brandon Boyd — So we’ve we’ve just got to talk through it.

Rich Birch — Right.

Brandon Boyd — We’ve only got about 20 full time equivalents behind the scene.

Rich Birch — That’s great.

Brandon Boyd — So when you’re in a church that’s twenty seven hundred and then you add in kids, you’re easily at thirty two hundred on a weekend basis. We have to run lean and mean knowing that we’re trying to project out for when we need to hire additional staff members or we need to hire some part-time.

Brandon Boyd — We’re launching an internship program. And so what we’re trying to do is making sure that our staff team feels taken care of, feels heard, feels supported. And I think a lot of that is being accomplished by when we went from a flat organization, nobody, everybody knew who their boss was, but their boss didn’t know maybe what specifically what their directions were. So as we created the executive team, as we created the lead team, as we’ve got those ministry teams, we’ve created avenues for people to be able to feel supported and cared for.

Brandon Boyd — And so what I’ve said to our team is you’re caring for the people just down the rung for us. Obviously, Luke and I are caring for our entire team. But just making sure that we’ve got avenues for feedback, avenues for just encouragement, avenues for conversation.

Brandon Boyd — And then what we’re trying to figure out next is how do we hold people accountable? So how do we, yes, we’ve told people what’s expected from them. We actually created like a staff covenant for 2026. Like here here’s our expectations, just in case you’re you’re curious about what’s expected from you. And in case you’re caring, well, I was hired under this pastor and this was what the agreement was, that’s out the door. But as 2026 for Quay Church, just so we’re all entirely clear…

Rich Birch — That’s cool.

Brandon Boyd — …this is what we’re covenanting, not only, from us as a team, but to the Lord. And so we’ve got that. We’ve got accountability.

Rich Birch — What are some of the, just before we leave that, what what are some of the things that landed in that? You don’t have to get into this…

Brandon Boyd — Yeah.

Rich Birch —…but, you know kind of categories of things that you’re, you’re recovenanting around?

Brandon Boyd — We kind of made a joke that it sometimes we just, our volunteers, which we call stewards, they kind of outwork us.

Rich Birch — Right.

Brandon Boyd — And so like, hello, like we, we want to be the first one in and the last one out. And so in the covenant, it just talks about, Hey, we’re we’re going to be here for all the gatherings and we’re going to set the table and make sure that our house is ready to go before people show up.

Brandon Boyd — We’re going to covenant. If we’re going to ask our church family to do something, whether be in a group or tithe or whatever, those things that we ask from the platform, we’re going to do it first. So one of the things that I just said to our staff team today is, we need to give up parking in our staff parking lot and we need to park in the farthest spots away on our grass parking a lot.

Rich Birch — 100%, yep.

Brandon Boyd — So those spots are ready to go for people. And so it’s just little things like that, just making sure that we’re super clear so that there’s no shadow of a doubt that as we go into 2026 and we kind of anticipated that we would have another growth wave based upon what we saw in 2024 and 2025, that in 2026, we just need to be clear what was expected from them as people stepped into it.

Rich Birch — That’s cool. Well, when, you know, everything in a growth phase that you’re in, it can get chaotic pretty quickly, because everything feels urgent. It’s like, you know literally, even just the situation we talked about, and before we jumped on the call. It’s like, oh, my goodness, you know, we had a bunch of new more people show up that we’re excited they’re with us, but now we’ve got figure out how to keep them plugged in and all that.

Rich Birch — How do you keep from the urgency turning into chaos? What are you doing to try to really push back in some ways and and keep your team focused? And I like that no freak out, you know, no freak out policy. Like, hey, let’s not freak out. We’ll figure it out. But but what’s that functionally look like?

Brandon Boyd — I think part of it is it just goes back to our staff values. And so when we were looking, when I first came on board on this, on the church staff, Luke was like, Hey, we got to rebrand the church now. And I said, that’s a longer conversation that we need to roll out in a smart and healthy way. And also gives us time to cast vision.

Brandon Boyd — But that first fall that I was here in the fall of 2024, we rolled out staff values and we really go back to those staff values to help people understand they’re not just phrases that we stick up on a wall, but it’s who we are as ah as a culture, as a people. And so one of our values is that we want to build a kingdom over castles.

Rich Birch — Good.

Brandon Boyd — So we’re more interested in obviously the kingdom of the church, the kingdom of the Lord, and not your own necessary small little ministry thing at Quay Church. So everybody is all in on the broader conversation of the church. Like I told our staff team this past week, as we look towards the launch of the fourth gathering here in a few weeks: No matter what your role is, you’re all jumping in and helping make sure that facilities is ready to go the next day. No matter what your role is, we’re all going to be nimble and shift to it.

Brandon Boyd — Another phrase that we like to use is that we’re nimble over fragile. And so we don’t really hold on to things that that that we’re, that we created. We’re we we’re open-handed and open-palmed. It goes back to what I said earlier about stewardship. We’re just stewarding this whole thing. This isn’t ours. This is the Lord’s.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Brandon Boyd — That comes down from our lead pastor to our team. He models that so well. And so we really just kind of run with the staff values. Our other staff values are: we take the risk And so we’re willing to take risks for the gospel, whatever that looks like. We’re willing to push that forward. We want to be sled dogs over show dogs.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Brandon Boyd — And so we want to put in the good work and all pulled together in the same direction. “Slow is smooth and smooth is fast” is another one of our staff values. We believe that, yes, we can take time to make a decision, but once we make the decision, then we can run so much faster because we’ve got clarity. “Kingdom over castle” I already talked about. “Nimble over fragile.”

Brandon Boyd — And then a last one is we just want to burn the ships. And so this is the day that the Lord has for us. And so while we do look back in the past from time, the past is in the past, and we’ve got today. We’re not promised for tomorrow, obviously. And so what can we do now with what the Lord is doing in our church to make sure that the message of Jesus is available to people not only in this part of Windermere, but also throughout the other Orlando regions?

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so cool. When you think about Quay today, what tells you that the church is becoming healthier not just bigger? i know there can be like criticisms of, and listen, that comes from a place of h being on the other side of these questions when I’ve led before where there’s like this criticism. They look at something like Quay and they’re like, oh, like that’s just whatever. It’s a fad. It’s going, you know, but that’s not the case. What are some of those, either metrics, or stories, or things that you see happening that say like, oh no, things are actually heading, not just bigger, but also healthier.

Brandon Boyd — It’s not like we have a growth strategy on my whiteboard over here and we’re like, hey, we got to hit this marker and this marker by then.

Rich Birch — Yes. Right.

Brandon Boyd — But I think what’s, I’ll just tell you a quick story.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Brandon Boyd — We’re in a collection of what we call Sermon Series Collection of Conversations. So we’re in a conversation about Song of Songs right now. We call it Divine Desire, and we’re walking through that.

Brandon Boyd — And the Lord has really blessed what we would call altar ministry. And so at the end of our gathering, especially during the last song, after the message has been communicated, people just come down to the front of the altar for prayer.

Rich Birch — That’s great.

Brandon Boyd — And we’ve got pastors, we’ve got elders, we’ve got deacons. And some of those things that are being communicated in those moments, like last fall, we had a gentleman come down and he said that he was cheating on his spouse and was repentant. And he’s like, I got to go get her now. And we’ve got to share this right now in this moment.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Brandon Boyd — So I think we’re seeing like real life transformation take place in the gatherings, obviously through the movement of the Holy Spirit. But then the Spirit is directing people to make inroads right now in that moment. Like don’t leave this building today before you’ve had a conversation with the Lord and you’ve confessed your sin.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Brandon Boyd — So I think from that perspective, I’ve just been able to see that happen and to see people really take their faith seriously in that moment, rather than just like coming to a worship gathering, getting in their car and going home.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I love that. That’s great. Any, you know, the talk to me a little bit more about the response time, the altar time. I would say this for sure is a “trends” may be the wrong word, but like we see more and more churches, you know, employing that, that tactic. What have you learned from just managing that as a normal part of your worship experience? What, what has been, and has that been an add in the last couple of years or has it always been there?

Brandon Boyd — I think it’s I think it’s been an add, but it hasn’t been like a programmatic element…

Rich Birch — Right.

Brandon Boyd — …that we’ve said, we’ve got to have altar ministry. I think it’s just been a movement of the Lord. So last spring we had we had this moment where it was our last gathering of the morning was at 11:45. And then we had this altar ministry where people just stayed and prayed after the end. And I don’t even remember what Luke spoke on. That started at 1:00 basically, and didn’t wrap up till 6 p.m. that night.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Brandon Boyd — So we’re not manufacturing any of this.

Rich Birch — No. Yeah, yeah.

Brandon Boyd — I think it’s just the Lord. And I think it’s just being sensitive to what the Lord is doing. And I think it’s the courage of not only Luke, our pastor, but other people that fill the pulpit when Luke isn’t there, that says, hey, don’t leave this room.

Brandon Boyd — Our worship pastor, Justin Melton, does a great job of this at the end of each gathering. Don’t leave this room before you’ve talked to somebody, if the Lord is prompting that. So I think from a programmatic standpoint, we just want to be open-handed and just provide opportunities for people either to come forward or go to the next step space to have a conversation. And so it’s just been really remarkable to watch.

Brandon Boyd — Like at first, I was kind of like, what in the world is going on? These people are just getting out of their seats and coming down front. But that altar ministry is not only prevalent in our Sunday morning worship gatherings, it’s prevalent in our student gatherings, whether that’s Wednesday night for middle school or Sunday nights for high school, and Thursday nights for our young adults. So it’s just something that the Lord is kind of stirring in and through our church.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I was visiting, maybe 18 months ago, I was visiting a church. It was, the year before it was the second fastest growing church in the country. And showed up, and there was nothing about the kind of my pre-experience with this church that would have led me to believe that like, oh, altar time was going to be a part of their experience. And but very similarly, at the end of the the service, it was very like nonchalant is is the wrong word, but it wasn’t it was not a programmatic. We are, you know people know what we’re talking about.

Brandon Boyd — Yeah, yeah.

Rich Birch — Like we’re not, we’re not trying to, we’re not doing anything to get people to respond. And I would say, I don’t know, two thirds of the room got up and came down or, you know, half the room, it was like a huge portion of the room got up and came down. And I remember talking to the lead guy the next thing, he’s a good friend of mine. And I was like, like trying to pick it apart and understand it from a process point of view. And he was like, Rich man, the fact that we don’t totally understand it is a part of what we think that God’s using, right? Which is is beautiful. So that’s, that’s great to hear. That’s cool.

Rich Birch — Are you doing anything with your elders or staff team to train towards that? Because you want to make sure that, you know, the people that are receiving some of that, you know, are kind of thought about it ahead of time before they got down there. Is anything you’re doing on that front?

Brandon Boyd — Yeah, we’ve had training conversations and just how to be receptive to what people are sharing and knowing that we’ve we’ve done that with our elders, with our deacons and our staff team and pastors. and

Rich Birch — Sure.

Brandon Boyd — But some of that is obviously there’s there’s going to be greater needs that extend past a Sunday.

Rich Birch — Right.

Brandon Boyd — So what is the immediate conversation that we need to have? But then if it’s a counseling issue, how can we refer them to a counseling partner?

Rich Birch — Right.

Brandon Boyd — Are there things that we can handle internally? Part of it is like we’ve just had this rapid growth in our church where it’s like you would assume if you come to our church that we would have this ministry, this handoff, this handoff. So another thing that we’ve had to do this past year is kind of build those handoffs as we’ve experienced some of these altar ministry things.

Rich Birch — Sure.

Brandon Boyd — Yeah.

Rich Birch — That’s cool. Well, it’s been a fantastic conversation. What kind of final words would you have or encouragement would you have to a leader who’s maybe experiencing, obviously what you’re experiencing is super unique across the country, but is maybe experiencing a season of growth that there’s, Hey, there’s, we’re experiencing more momentum. We’re seeing this across the country in a number of churches, but what would you, what would your kind of final words be to them as we wrap up today’s conversation?

Brandon Boyd — I think for me, just the final thing that I’d like to say, Rich, is it’s easy to feel overwhelmed.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Brandon Boyd — I’ve felt overwhelmed in this season, and it’s okay to acknowledge that. And so just to have that space with my lead pastor where I can go into him and just say, look, I’m overwhelmed. I’m going to be okay. But I just want you to know that I am overwhelmed. And then being able to be transparent with our elder board about that. I think that’s just ah a feeling of, as if you’re in a fast-growing church like this situation or other situations, where it’s okay just to acknowledge we’re humans. You don’t have to act like a superhuman, that everything is okay.

Rich Birch — Right

Brandon Boyd — But just to say, hey, I’m overwhelmed and it’s a season. And then being able to express that not only to your lead pastor, to your elders, but I’ve got friends outside of Orlando that are in pastoral ministry that understand what that feels like. So just creating that network of being able to say that. Because what my fear is that people can just get overwhelmed and can get burned out and can say like, I hate the church. I don’t want to be a pastor anymore. And I believe that the when the Lord calls you, he’s also going to equip you. And so at the same time, you just need to be able to voice that and just say like, I am overwhelmed. We are going to make it through it, but here’s some things that I need help on.

Rich Birch — That’s so good. Brandon, I really appreciate you being on today and taking time out of your schedule, packed schedule, I’m sure, to help us today.

Brandon Boyd — Yeah.

Rich Birch — So I really appreciate that. If people want to connect with Quay, connect with you, kind of track with the story, where do we want to send them online?

Brandon Boyd — Yeah, so you can go to our social media. That’s @quaychurch, Q-U-A-Y Church. Also, quaychurch.org. And then I’m on Instagram @bgboyd.

Rich Birch — Nice. That’s great. Thanks so much for being here today.

Brandon Boyd — Yep, my pleasure.