unSeminary Podcast

Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re chatting with Sean Morgan, founder of The Ascent Leader, a year-long development program structured around relational cohorts which is designed to engage ministry leaders in transparent conversations and one-on-one coaching with world-class leaders. As we transition from COVID being pandemic to endemic, there are paradigms church leaders have carried for decades that need to change. Listen in as Sean talks about where we need to shift our thinking and adopt new mindsets to be able to reach our communities and move forward in the future. Redefine “full”. // One of the things Sean believes we need to reexamine in the church is the 80% rule that says if the room is 80% full, then it’s “full”. With everything that’s changed since covid and the social distancing people were encouraged to do, Sean believes today that “full” number is around 70%. However, you don’t grow your church by reaching your current attenders, you grow by reaching the unchurched. And Sean believes unchurched people who visit your church will feel like the service is full when it’s at 50% capacity. People who are new and visiting your church don’t want to be wedged right in between two other people.Get back to some of the normal. // As church leaders, we have to get out of the mindset that we want to see the room 80% full before offering another service. Get back into some of the normal rhythms of your services before COVID. If you had two services before, but are now offering just one, go back to the two scheduled services as before. If you don’t create more space for people, they won’t come. Cast vision to your team not about filling the room, but rather reaching people. If you wait to hit the 80% mark in your service, it will create a bottleneck both physically and mentally.Have focus to lead your team. // In this season, leaders need to continue caring for themselves and developing themselves by creating margin in their lives. Margin fuels focus, and in return focus fuels more margin. A great leader has focus and their team knows what their focus is and what success looks like. That leader can say no to things that aren’t their focus. When a leader doesn’t have focus, the team is on edge because they don’t know what to expect or how to measure success. Listen to those close to you. // To create space and margin without being so busy, listen to your spouse and others close to you. Give your team permission to speak to you on what’s working and what isn’t. Ask and listen to your spouse about where you’re spinning your wheels, and do the same with your team. Those closest to us can see things that we can’t, and can identify our weaknesses. Create a culture where you can openly talk about these things.Coming together to grow. // Leadership is lonely and it takes work to be transparent and vulnerable. This is why The Ascent Leader developed cohorts. Church leaders have an unlimited amount of content at their fingertips but it’s just noise until they can process it. The Cohorts bring a small circle of peers closer together for support, feedback, and learning as they grow in their leadership. Here church leaders can meet physically and process curated information together through facilitated conversations.Shift gears when needed. // At times you have to shift gears in leading a team. What got you there on the team won’t always get you to the next level of your leadership. The Ascent Leader offers three cohort tracks to serve ministry leaders where they are. One track is for pastors navigating the transition into a new leadership role, one is for leaders seeking to grow in preaching, and another for planting pastors looking for the key relationships, tools, and resources for their new season of ministry. You can find out more about The Ascent Leader at https://theascentleader.org/ and on Instagram @TheAscentLeader. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: CDF Capital Since 1953, CDF Capital has helped Christians and churches embrace their part in this story by providing the 3 kinds of capital every congregation needs for growth—Financial Capital, Leadership Capital, and Spiritual Capital. CDF Capital’s XP Summit Cohorts provide an exclusive, year-long experience that brings together hand-selected global ministry leaders and your peers in an intimate, small-group setting. Visit http://cdf.capital/UnCohort to learn more and enroll today! Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Hey everybody, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in today. You know every week we try to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you and this week is absolutely no exception. Super excited to have my friend Sean Morgan with us. He is the founder of an organization called The Ascent Leader. If you do not know Sean, I don’t know where you’ve been, but you really should lean in on today’s conversation. I think you’re going to find this really fruitful. The Ascent is they do they do these one year long (that really become multiple year) development programs that really do these incredible cohorts with leaders in transitions, with communicators, senior leaders, all kinds of fantastic folks. Sean has his pulse on ah so much that’s going on in the local church. Sean, welcome to the show. Sean Morgan — Yeah, it’s great to be here, Rich. Not only a huge fan of you, the unSeminary podcast, but I do track what you’re doing often, and shoot emails every now and then with questions on stuff I heard that you you spoke on when you so when you pop up on other podcasts. Those are ones that I always highlight to listen. So It’s a joy to be here. Rich Birch — Oh thanks so much. I’m I’m honored that you’re here. Why don’t you tell us kind of give us the Sean Morgan story – tell us a bit about your background and then how that connects with The Ascent Leader. Sean Morgan — Yeah, so I never had a strategic plan for ministry or a call into ministry at a young age. Like I was really interested in airplanes and followed that passion into the air force and ended up flying airplanes which ah, shifted gears from a full-time job to a part-time job when I left active duty air force and joined the reserves. And a big part of that was I fell in love with a local church plant outside of San Francisco and that was really my call into ministry was there. And it wasn’t just a call into ministry, it was also focused on that town, that church, and serving that lead pastor. Like I felt a very distinct piece of the call was identified in serving, complimenting, that lead pastor for a season. Um and I felt like that from the very beginning. I thought it was actually, foolishly, I was like oh yeah, this would be 6 to 12 months, you know then it was almost 8 years. Rich Birch — Nice. Love it. Sean Morgan — Um and then God blessed that that church – we had some highs and lows in the church plant. A guy named Thom Rainer, who was CEO at Lifeway and has written a ton of great books, wrote a book about that church that other leaders wanted to come in and glean from us. And that turned into ultimately what I’m doing now which is discovering ways to engage with leaders relationally and conversationally, to figure out what their next steps are for what I would call whatever channel in their world is going to bring the most ministry fruit, low-hanging fruit would be a concept, or the most everybody has 3 or 4 or 5 key things they could be working on. But if you can really build relationship with people you probably can figure out what’s the one that’s the most important – that’s going to be you know, take them further faster in Andy Stanley terminology – so that’s what we’re able to focus our ministry on now is figuring figuring that out. And we do that at The Ascent Leader in a cohort environment. Rich Birch — Love it. Well one of the things—there’s a lot that I appreciate about your leadership—one of the things I appreciate about your leadership is you are in the corner of local church leaders. You really are the kind of person that’s a friend of leaders, you come alongside of so many different leaders. I know so many people through the years have been um, really helped, honored, blessed by your your cohort work. And so I wrangled you, I twisted your arm, and I said listen, I want to I want to tap your brain about what you’re hearing as you’re talking with church leaders across the country. You’ve a lot of relationships with church leaders – would love to kind of hear kind of what’s the headspace that you keep running into, the kind of issues or where people are at. I was kind of joking earlier it’s not this isn’t really the like 2 year covid anniversary show, but there is like ah you know that’s an interesting milestone. We find ourselves, you know a lot of things have changed in the last two years; a lot of things are exactly the same. What what do you find yourself running into as you’re talking with leaders across the country? Sean Morgan — Yeah, that’s great. As you were asking that question I’m so glad you said, you know, there’s this phrase – a lot of things have changed, and a lot of things are exactly the same. And that’s absolutely right – we’re still us. Through through all of the turmoil of 2020/2021 and to whatever we are now – endemic? Who knows? Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Sean Morgan — Um, we’re still us. We still bring our stuff. And so we still have things that we do well naturally and things we don’t, and then that bears fruit in our teams and our organizations. But I would say from from the where we are here and now – one of the things that I see is leaders are are still… even though I think the language is changing not everyone’s comparing themselves to precovid, and say oh we’re yet precovid and I think that’s healthy, you know it’s like where are we now? And what do we need to do to go forward? But I do think there is a sense of, from a standpoint of how many people can we reach, there’s still a big argument that is you know going to take years to really conclude is the nature of tracking church size by Sunday morning attendance not being helpful to true transformation, right? True discipleship. Rich Birch — So true. Sean Morgan — But I do think there’s some elements of that that are like well how many people can we reach and serve? And what I’m seeing, one one thing that’s definitely a theme for right now in ministry is there are paradigms we have carried with us for decades that need to go away. So it’s it’s not just the precovid attendance thing but there is ah a thought of a little bit deeper than that. So one of the questions I always try to dig into with leaders is the why? Okay you said that. But why is that? Why do you think that’s true? And if it’s true, why is it actually true? And um one of the things that I think we need to really reexamine in church is what we used to call was the 80% rule. Do you remember that? Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely – if the room is 80% full, it’s full. Right? Yes. Sean Morgan — Yep, yep. Yeah I think that number for your church attenders today is between is is down 10%. Rich Birch — Yeah, okay, interesting. Sean Morgan — So I think average church attenders want more elbow room. We’re all in the we’re all coming out of 24 months of social distancing and just being a little further away. So I think that that that’s changed, whether it’s a tiny little bit or a couple percentage points, I’m going to say for the average regular attender in your church today I think that’s 70%. Now here’s where here’s where the rub is. You don’t grow your church by reaching your current attenders. Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm. Sean Morgan — You grow your church by by reaching unchurched right? People who aren’t there. I think that number for unchurched is 50%. Rich Birch — Oh oh this is okay – I’m just taking notes here. There’s a bunch I want to loop back on this. Sean Morgan — So yeah, okay. Rich Birch — So you think it’s lower for folks that don’t normally attend church. Why is that what? Why do you think that is? Sean Morgan — Well, they don’t know anybody. Rich Birch — Right. Sean Morgan — So if you go to church—and and I love your church by the way; I get you know have a privilege of being sort of an insider there in some ways—but you know, you go there. It’s a great church but you know people and you you… Rich Birch — Yep. Sean Morgan — …Generally, you know, Willow Creek years that ago had the sections mindset of trying to connect people in communities based on where they sit in the room because they’re they’re frequently in those same parts of the auditorium at the same service times. And I think there’s some truth into that or creatures of habit. So you don’t mind going in and there’s somebody from your small group and you guys sit up next to them. If you show up in that room and you’re already feeling timid about, why am I even here? Rich Birch — Yes. Sean Morgan — Like I talked myself into coming here. I talked myself into getting out of the car and walking in here. You don’t want to sit in a seat between two people. If you go into a movie theater and look where people sit before the show when the lights on and you can actually see, people don’t sit together. If they come together, they sit together. Rich Birch — No, it’s so true. Sean Morgan — If they don’t, they want their own row. And so there’s just this mindset of of… Now as the room fills up obviously that that social distancing space narrows, and there are concerts and venues that are filling up every seat, but in general I think the feeling of people when you’re unknown and you feel unknown, you just don’t want to be wedged in between two people. And I can tell you what, nobody likes my singing so they don’t want to sit next to me.. Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah, so there’s a lot of implications there. I think you’re I think you’re definitely on to something there. You know I know even just as ah as an individual—and you know I do this for a living – I think about church for a living—when I go to a new place where I don’t know anybody. There is that just natural kind of like pushback around just like a little more space around me. So what would be some of the implications of that? I guess that’s driving towards more services, smaller services. You know I like I would say I’m a fan of multisite – to me that what I hear I hear more campuses, more smaller campuses. That does resonate with some of the conversations I’m having with church leaders out there, thinking about hey like it two years ago three years ago we might have deemed a campus successful if it was five hundred or seven hundred people. Maybe maybe a campus of 200 is successful. Maybe if it’s it’s fewer people and we’re going to do two of them or three of them. Where we used to just do one – kind of cram people in. Is that the kind of thing you’re seeing or or bumping up against? Sean Morgan — Yeah I think it um, it’s multiple things. So like if I talk to a church and they say you know here’s where we’re here’s where we’re at and we do get—I try not to ask first but like where were you at before covid—just getting a sense of the size of your room, and how many service times you had, and those types of things. Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm Sean Morgan — Most of the time if somebody tells me, they’re 50% full and I say, well how many services are you running? Well we had one. How many did you run before covid? Two. Um, why don’t you start a second service? Well because we’re not quite full now. And what they mean by that is we’re not at or near 80%. And I’m like, there is a sense of um, we like the room full. Rich Birch — Yes Sean Morgan — If you’re preaching. It is so awesome to walk in and see standing room only, like you feel great. Rich Birch — Yeah. Sean Morgan — We got to get out of that mindset; we have to just we have to readjust. So there is a sense of—I can tell you I’m going to say a phrase, which is like—if you build it they will come. That’s not entirely true, but you know what is true? If you don’t build it, they won’t come. Rich Birch — That’s so true. Yes. Sean Morgan — And so I think we have to get out of that mindset of trying to get toward 80% full. I think we have to go back to, hey people are ready for some of the normal rhythms of their life. like if you had an 8 am and a 10 am but right now you’re running one 9 am; get your 8 am and your 10 am back. Create the space and then work your team with the vision, not to fill it as the goal but to be reaching people. I think there’s a whole new opportunity here. And so yeah I would say that’s definitely something that we’ve got to think about that different. We have to create space, so we know that, right? When we talk about just welcoming new people into church, like from the experience from the curb in, like is this a positive experience? Do people feel welcome? Well part of feeling welcome is having room. Rich Birch — Yes. Sean Morgan — And their needle for what feels right with how much room is needed… like here’s another one that I think maybe might be like 1980s/1990s old church advice was um… Rich Birch — Sure. Sean Morgan — …only put up half the chairs. And then when people come in and you’re pulling chairs out of the back, they’re like whoa, this is magical… Rich Birch — Yes. Sean Morgan — …like we’re we’re you know like this room’s filling up. Do you know who that feels good to? The people that work there. Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Sean Morgan — Do you know who you know what that feels like when it’s your first time or your second time? It feels like nobody prepared for me. I’m not welcome here. Rich Birch — Right. Yeah yeah. Sean Morgan — Like if you go over to somebody’s house and there’s a dining room table with 6, and you walk in to their house and 6 people are sitting down seated sitted seated down and and they’re all talking and enjoying the dinner table, and you stand there and then somebody has to oh oh yeah, yeah let’s let’s go get an extra chair for Sean. Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Sean Morgan — Or let’s go get an extra chair for Rich. You don’t feel the same as when you walk in they thought about you before you got there and there’s your chair. Rich Birch — Yeah, welcome. Sean Morgan — And so I think some things like that we just have to reexamine. Those aren’t difficult things for for church but they’re all paradigms that have carried with us over the years that we have to reexamine because there is some huge opportunity from just the standpoint of we have the opportunity to reset some things. Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. Sean Morgan — And and we can choose which ones those are. So that’s that’s one area where I feel like um, it’s going to be uncomfortable for leaders to do that. Nobody wants to preach with a 50% full room, but my guess would be if you start that now you’re gonna see it grow a little bit by the time you know, May rolls around and then by fall you’re going to see it grow even more. But if you’re so if you stay with one service instead of two, or two instead of three and you’re waiting for that 80% mark, I think it’s the bottleneck in a lot of ways. It’s not only the bottleneck physically, but maybe even for your psyche and your mental thought process, and that of the team. Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. The other piece of that that I love from a ah church growth, multiplication, leadership point of view is more services requires more leaders. It requires us to get out and find more leaders, which we know ultimately does drive growth. That as we engage more people in the mission and as we force ourselves to find people and say, hey can you get plugged into what God’s doing here – that does drive growth in our churches. That does. Because all those people’s lives change and then they end up telling their friends like oh I’m I’m volunteering at the church now. Why are you volunteering at the church? Oh you should come. All of those those are all positive um, you know, kind of outcomes of new services, new volunteers, where I think sometimes in this season there’s a bit of like, well we we feel the overwhelm of not having as many volunteers, and so it’s like we back off from that. We let’s well make it easier for ourselves. Let’s make it easier so we don’t have to find those people. Sean Morgan — Yeah tail wagging the dog. Right. Rich Birch — Yeah absolutely. We got to go the other way around. Yeah I heard a leader say recently said you know we’ve got to stop thinking about rebuilding, and we’ve just got to get back to building. Like we we’ve got to stop focusing on, well let’s try to get back to where we were before… Sean Morgan — Right. Rich Birch — …and just get back to we’re reaching people. Like we just got to get our head around, okay, we’re outreaching – gonna reach a whole bunch of new people. Yeah I love that. Sean Morgan — Yep, yeah, that’s a beautiful statement. Rich Birch — Now when you’re thinking about leaders as individuals – a part of what I love is you have like the pulse on on people at you know, at the at the level of you know, I’m an individual leader – not even necessarily outside of even you know, them leading in their um you know, in their community – what would you say the need of leaders that’s maybe stayed the same – that was their precovid, that’s still there now, that we have to kind of as as individuals – what what should we be thinking about? How should we be kind of caring for ourselves or developing ourselves in this season, that again was maybe their precovid, but is still there now today? Sean Morgan — Yeah, so I love the thought of margin and focus and synergy and alignment and clarity. These kinds of ideas – man the I had a conversation with a great leader yesterday who asked me a question about some somebody I was in a conversation with, and they were surprised that this person like had time in their schedule to do these things. And I was like I’m not surprised, because the leaders that I see leading some of the biggest things in terms of just movements and and that sort of thing—is not again about church size, but but the things that I’m just taking notes on and awed by—they’re leaders that have focus, and their team knows what that focus is, so they’re focused on that which means they say no to the other things. And then their team actually knows what success looks like; their team knows, okay so a leader without focus comes in the room and their team is always on edge because this person has a high standard, but we don’t know what they’re going to measure today. Focus actually tells everybody here’s what we’re going to be measuring, and here’s the yardstick for measuring. So how do you get to focus? And I said margin is the birthplace of clarity, which leads to focus and it’s a win for you and it’s a win for your team. Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. Sean Morgan — And the crazy thing is is when you have focus, it actually fuels margin. There’s there’s a repeating cycle there, but it has to start with margin. So that’s my answer is, leaders need focus. They needed it before they need it now. I do think leaders are figuring it out having been… the pendulum always swings side to side, right? And so when you get squeezed, and pinched, and pressured through all the things that the last couple years have offered, you feel that more, and you react to it, and you adjust. And so I feel like people now are are coming into this next season of ministry saying: I don’t have margin. How do I get it? Rich Birch — Right. Right. I love that. I love that margin is the birthplace of focus – that is so good. That’s going to stick with me for sure. I love… How are you finding that leaders are are maybe restructuring their lives to get more margin? to to find that space? I totally agree with you that there seems to be this… there was a time, I think in a previous generation where being busy was seen as a badge of honor, right? And our friend Carriey Nieuwhof has said this publicly, right? Sean Morgan — Indeed. Yeah. Rich Birch — At one point it was like hey you talked to a leader ,and it was like I’m busy, busy, busy – that was like ah propagated by who ultimately a lot of those leaders who lived in that you know unfortunately have ended up flaming out. Their lives have not it’s not worked out well in life. Where I think we’re getting to a better spot where people are saying hey I that isn’t my goal. My goal is not to be busy, busy busy, but it’s to be focused and have mission. So what are some ways that you’re you’re finding that leaders are adding more margin or getting more margin into their lives in in this season? Sean Morgan — Yeah I think that there’s a couple things. The first one is just listen to your spouse. Rich Birch — So true. Sean Morgan — Husbands listen to your wives; wives listen to your husbands. Um I am always amazed when I talk to a leader’s spouse at how smart they are… Rich Birch — Right? So true. Sean Morgan — …and how insightful. And these leaders are immersed in ministry all day long and need you talk to their spouse for 10 minutes and they can summarize everything in a couple of minutes. Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, that is so true. Sean Morgan — So listen to those people close to you, and that includes your team, but there’s an additional there’s probably an additional onus with working with your team, as you have to give them permission. Like genuine permission – they have to know they can speak into things. Because I think it’s probably almost 100% true that most employees know what their boss’s weaknesses are. Rich Birch — So true. Yes. Sean Morgan — And most employees, like we all think we know what our boss’s weaknesses are. Um, so I I think the it’s also true that they know when you’re doing things that are going to be moving the organization forward and where it seems like you might be getting pulled, and we can all be numb to that – that frog and water concept. Which I’ve never tried that with a frog – I’m not recommending it. But… Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes. Sean Morgan — …But you know you know what I’m saying. It’s like the deck chairs on the Titanic. Nobody knows that that is actually a true thing. But the metaphor works. Rich Birch — A thing that happened ah true. Don’t let yeah exactly exactly it’s good. Sean Morgan — So we have to build that into our teams. We have to say it and then they have to feel that we mean it when we said it. Like I tell leaders there’s no such thing as an open door policy. You can’t just say that because that puts the onus on them to come in and break the ice and enter. You you can have an open door policy, but you have to grease the skids, right? You have to create the culture that allows things to move that direction and I think as we listen to our spouses on where am I spinning my wheels? If I had to say no to one more thing, what what would that be? And we need to do the same thing with our teams, and we have to ask them and we have to mean it, which means we have to have showed them that they they really can speak into that. That’s different. There is a ah, decades old sort of like just that loneliness of the corner office and some of those things are fairly unavoidable, but some of those things I think have been created over the years of leadership isolation. And we can do some things about it. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s interesting. I love that. I think that’s so true. I think we have to it’s like we’ve got to go first when it comes to creating and a community a culture with our teams where they’re willing to call us on our stuff, right? We’ve got to show that; we’ve got to open up that vulnerability. We have to you know we have to work to be transparent. It doesn’t just magically happen. I love that. Now I’d love to pivot in here a little bit more about what you’re doing in cohorts. I just love what you’ve done here. I have had multiple friends that have engaged with you have done have just really been incredibly blessed by you know what you do but kind of tell us a little bit about that. What you know what are what are these magical cohorts that you are ah, you know you’re leading with leaders across the country. Has that worked? Give us kind of description of what that looks like. Sean Morgan — Yeah, well we started this about seven years ago and the whole point of it was I had felt over the years, and you see it more clearly now, but you know content was everywhere. And more people were engaging in content and it’s basically free, right? Books you can get for free. Libraries. Audible. If you really follow an author most authors are blogging, like their thoughts are out there. If they’re pastors they’re preaching about some of the same stuff they’re writing about. Podcasts. So there was there was a ah, rising just as the amount of content available at your fingertips if you were hungry was was rising. It was basically unlimited then, and it’s beyond unlimited now. That doesn’t really work mathematically, but you know, um, and so I started feeling like what are what are… that that actually could feel heavy right? It could feel dizzying, so what are leaders doing with that content? And I had a theory. One: leadership’s lonely. We talked about that – some some of those things you can fix some of them you can’t, but leadership’s lonely. And two, I had this thought that you, everybody has to process the information out there. Um, in fact, it’s almost like it’s data… Rich Birch — Right. Sean Morgan — …and then as you process it it becomes informative. It becomes information. So it’s noise, right? And then you you capture pieces of it and then as you process it and think about it and there’s a certain amount of that – introverts do more of their processing by themselves, extroverts with others, but we all need to share ideas with other people. We all need other people to lean in and validate our thinking. And so I started this thing of there’s a lot of great conferences out there, there’s a lot of great content out there, leadership gatherings out there. What if I could do more with getting leaders around fire pits, or my podcast leaders in living rooms, at those metaphors, but I was actually literally thinking about what if I could do that and curate, not only who’s there but what they come in wanting to wrestle with, like if you could get the right who’s and they already know sort of central themes that they have in common then they’re walking in the door maybe having no relational connection. But the possibilities of tight relational connections are right there on the cusp. Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm. Sean Morgan — And then what if you could so you could curate that and then what if you could facilitate the conversations that begin to bring that out. Here’s what I’m seeing, here’s why I’m seeing it, here’s why I think it’s important to me. What do you guys think? Well I know you I’ve been to your church and so that all create that all that type of thing sort of creates ah, proximity and a closeness that really I would just rev revolve around the word relationship. And you’ll ask better questions of me if we’re in a better relationship because there’s trust that begins to form. And so I asked myself and we we experimented and we got some things right early on and we got some things that we didn’t get right and we and we continue to make tweaks and adjustments. But I asked could we create that and one of the things was how would we do that and the other thing was how often do you need to do it. And we came up with three, we think for all of our cohorts. We pretty much kick them off and they gather physically, typically in an AirBnB three times a year, and we come underneath ah, the tutelage of a mentor. Somebody typically we’ve studied, we all know, who open up their home, and in the inside version of their life and leadership and we usually get access to their executive team. So there’s a personal sort of thing of that in their home and then there’s a professional side of it into their executive team in their church. Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm. Sean Morgan — And all the while we’re doing all everything together, right? So we’re we’re doing coffee together. We’re piling around cars together. We’re doing meals together, and it just brings us closer and closer and it’s all those little in-between things that take what generally would be good and just keep adding 5 or 10% to it to where it really has become a great thing. Rich Birch — Love this. Friends, if you’re listening in and you’re not experiencing something like this, I would highly recommend that you reach out to Sean and his team. We’re going to give you more details at the end. But but even if you don’t want to talk with him, these kinds of relationships where you’re journeying over an extended period of time with a group of people with intentions—so it’s not just like hey we’re dudes hanging out or we’re we’re leaders hanging out—it’s like hey we’re we’re we’re wrestling with the same kinds of issues and we’re in each other’s lives enough to be able to push in, I just think there’s so much value there for sure. So interestingly in a so time when—I’d love to hear why this is because it seems intentional looking out I’ve never asked you this question—in a time when everything is going online, everything is like over Zoom. Everything is digital. It’s like The Ascent Leader you’re going the opposite direction. You got to get on planes, you got to get in rental cars, you got to sit in people’s backyards. Why? What is the magic in that? Why why bother? Why not why doesn’t it just all work over Zoom? Sean Morgan — Yeah, that it is very intentional, and I I applaud everything that people are doing to to pioneer and experiment into those spaces. And obviously during the pandemic that was life-giving to so pretty much everybody. Um. And so I’m all for that. You know the idea of of digital community and things like that like, I’ve I’ve been deployed in the air force I’ve been deployed 4 times so I’ve spent about a year of my life living in a tent somewhere on the other side of the planet. So been a digital husband and a digital dad in those moments, right? Lots of phone calls, lots of Facetimes, and all those things – it was wonderful. Um I wouldn’t choose that as my first option, I’d rather like take my kids out to ice cream than watch them eat ice cream on Zoom but that’s what was available. It was a wonderful tool. And so I feel the same way, like there are some great things there but I I do feel that at the end of the day, we talked about this or on the podcast, we’re still people. We’re still us – we are still made for community. So there’s Adam in the garden, and what did God say? Said this not good. Rich Birch — By himself. Yeah, yeah. Sean Morgan — But when community was created… Rich Birch — It’s very good. Sean Morgan — …this is very good. There’s something in us. We are hardwired to be like our creator in many ways and there is a community in the trinity. And there will be always a longing for community and so I think some of that is just physical proximity. And even you know not I’m not a mass person or a no mass person you know, do it, you need do to say safe and follow guidelines. But I’ll use that a little bit as a metaphor of like there’s something pleasing to taking your mask off—like metaphorical mask of of showing people who you are and the literal mask of kind of being able to, like I do feel like like you can hide behind that and like where I think you’re actually seeing in young people like they’re reluctant to take their mask off not because they care about Covid but because there’s some social anxiety, but once you begin to trust the people around you, you’re okay taking your mask off and um, yeah, so. Rich Birch — That’s so good. Well I love this and you know I as ah so in my time in the local church I’ve been in that executive pastor seat, you know, two and a half decades of that kind of work, and one of the things I’ve said for years with senior pastors that I love and have a real honor and privilege—guys like Carey – our mutual friend, Tim Lucas, Bruxy Cavy in Toronto—you know for years I said to those folks particularly that they don’t have a peer on the staff team. There might be 50, 60, 70 people on the staff team, but and and I and I am a good friend of theirs and I um, love them and care for them and you know do everything we can, but I’m not a peer and a lot of times those people particularly those lead pastors or communicators, people who do that, the work of their lives is so different than the rest of their team and the thing I love about what you do is you create a place where people like that can get those kinds of relationships and so it is such a different pressure. I know a communicator is is one of the cohorts you do um where it’s obviously groups of people who you know communicate for a living and that’s such a strange, that’s a strange, weird head thing where it’s like you are the product of the organization and you’re leading at the same time. Man, that’s an odd relationship to be in, and I can kind of see it, but man to get around with some other folks. I know you also do a Transitions cohort. Tell me about that. What’s that one all about? Sean Morgan — Yeah, that’s the thing that I spent about 80% of my time on personally, and there was a lot – ten years ago there was a lot going on about succession transition stuff, but really if you go if you go look at 95/99% of it, it’s about planning for succession. And I realized that there’s this baton pass and then what’s on the other side of that is everybody on the church kind of goes oh oh glad that’s over with. And then what’s on the other side of that is typically a 35 to 45 year old first time lead pastor, not always first time but sometimes, probably the vast majority and they’re they’re going. Um. I feel like a fake because I don’t know what I’m doing but I’m in charge and I don’t want to tell anybody because I don’t want him to lose confidence like I do believe I’m called here. So what do I do? In the axioms of leadership that I’ve been taught on the team don’t always apply leading the team, right? What got you here won’t get you there? Like what got you here on the team won’t get you there leading the team. You’ve you’ve got to shift gears in some ways as a leader in that role and just in the season of transition where everything is the way it is because somebody else decided it that way and set the culture that way. So it was this enigma and they were very lonely leaders. So that was the first thing that I began to step toward is working with post-succession, transitions leaders and it continues to be the mainstay of what we do. We just launched this week Church Planters – so there’s two ways to become a lead pastor. You either follow somebody or you go plant your own, and we just announced this week that we’ll be launching Church Planter cohorts, and I’m really pleased – that’s with Andy Wood who’s a friend of yours at Echo. He’ll be the director of that space. Rich Birch — Right. That’s fantastic. Sean Morgan — So we’ll really be able to help lead pastors across the board and I’m really pleased with that. God’s clearly ordained that. And the transition site really just continues to to gain momentum and looking to develop some content that will come out later this fall to help leaders outside of what we do in the Cohort. We’ll have some digital content out there. Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Well Sean, this has been a great conversation. I appreciate you giving us some time today to check in and and to hear where you’re at and to learn. Is there anything else you want to share just as we wrap up today’s episode? Sean Morgan — You know, first of all, thank you. It’s an honor to be here and I know you’ve got a great following with this podcast, and it’s your 600 episodes in, so that says a lot, like you’re bringing it in. I think Carey is the one it says with podcast people paying with their time and you’re clearly honoring that, and so it’s just a joy to step in and speak into that. I mean there’s a couple other things – I think one of the things that that leaders are going to have to address and we can talk about this later or and there’s some other experts that I think we will know some is. Most leaders saw an increase in giving during the Pandemic. Um, not all churches but most of them did pretty good, but they saw a decrease in giving units, which means their major gifts were were the driver behind that which is hey that’s a blessing, but there’s there’s some stuff below the surface that’s gonna have to be you know, worked on in churches to address that. And if you didn’t have major gifts coming in your budget was probably down. Maybe even way down. And so there’s some things that have to be addressed there. So I think that’s another huge topic that’s looming in the next few months. In fact just talking with leaders in the last thirty days, I have heard this story, I’ll bet at least 6 times, and it’s December giving was the single best month we’ve ever seen. In January and February we’re as much as 30% below budget and we don’t know why. Ao there could be this that could be a more poignant conversation sooner than I than we all hope it will be. I hope it won’t be, but I do think in the next three months or six months leaders are going to have to go deep there, face the music there, and begin to take action in different ways. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. You know I’ve been saying to friends, similarly, I’ve been saying you know if you don’t have a systematic approach on the fundraising side of what you do on the revenue generations—I literally just two days ago was talking with a lead pastor about these issues. He was you know he was picking my brain on some of that stuff and and um, you know at the end of the call I said to him I said, you know thinking about revenue needs to be a normal part of your day. Like this this shouldn’t be an exception. This shouldn’t be a like oh once a year I think about it, twice a year I think about it. It’s like every week you’re going to need to think about how are we increasing revenue. And I think a lot of our churches have skated by not having to do that, but that is odd for organizations of our size with the number of staff and the revenue that… Most organizations the senior leader—ah so a portion, a slice – it might not be all but it would be you know a third of their time—they’re thinking about revenue, they’re thinking about what… And that’s and that’s like that’s like Elon Musk, you know richest guy in the world, you know runs a big organization – he’s thinking about how are we going to sell more spaceships, how do we sell more you know… he doesn’t delegate it all that he’s actually wrestling through that. And the same is true for us, I think, but for some reason there are still church leaders out there that look at that as like oh that’s like below me or it’s like you know it’s yucky; I don’t want to think about it. So and that’s interesting. Sean Morgan — Yeah, and I think it could be over spiritualized. Well, it’s God’s provision and all this I saying its like well yes, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a plan. Rich Birch — That’s a good that’s a good word. Yeah yeah, exactly exactly and take some action on it. Sean, so good. Where do we want to send people online if they want to track with The Ascent Leader, or track with you? How do how do we want people to kind of follow up with you post today’s episode? Sean Morgan — Yeah I mean the best way our our website is great. We just did an update late last year which is The Ascent Leader A-S-C-E-N-T … theascentleader.org and their our social’s really through Instagram @theascentleader. Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much, Sean. Appreciate you being here, and I look forward to having you back in the future. Sean Morgan — Would love to. Thanks, Rich! Thanks for all you do. Rich Birch — Take care.

Thanks for joining us for this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Kaylee Estes who was the Connections Pastor at Restoration Community Church in Denver, Colorado. More and more people are single in our churches today than in previous generations. Younger people are waiting longer to get married, the divorce rate continues to increase, and even as lifespans increase, married people will likely find themselves widowed at some point. Listen in as Kaylee talks with us today about how to better create space for single people in our churches. Don’t overlook singles. // Many ministries, events, and messaging in churches are built around couples and two-parent families, and single people may feel overlooked or pigeonholed. The fact is there are more singles across all age spans in our churches than ever before and it’s important to communicate to them in a way that they can connect to without putting them in a box.Be careful about using the “singles” label. // While labeling small groups or ministries with the word “singles” is done with a good intention, it can inadvertently communicate that the purpose of the gathering is for dating only and puts unnecessary pressure on people. Single people may be wanting to connect with their peers in a similar stage of life for reasons other than finding a partner. Instead of using the word “singles”, try other terms like “30-somethings” or “college and career”. It’s ok if the groups are co-ed. The truth is when you get a bunch of people in a room, whether it’s a small group or a larger social ministry, people who are single are going to find each other just as married couples will find each other.Use stories from singles too. // Whether you are the pastor who does most of the preaching, you handle the social media, or you are responsible for some other aspect of external church communications, pay attention to the stories, metaphors and examples you use. It’s harder for a single person to identify with a marriage-related story and apply that to their own life. However, if you share a more relationally-neutral story, such as about coworkers/classmates, neighbors, or friends, then both a married and single person can put themselves into that scenario. Share about how a widowed 42 year old is stewarding their finances well, or how a divorced 64 year old is living on mission. Or how a never-married 20-something is serving their community. Use a variety of ages and stages in your examples.Ask, don’t assume. // A lot of times people make assumptions about singles, what they need, and how they want to be involved in the church rather than asking them. Don’t assume that single women want to do all the serving in your kids ministry. And don’t assume that the bulk of the volunteering should fall to young single people or they will become burned out. Ask them how you can better support, serve, and equip them. Ask them what they want to do in your church. Don’t just assign them tasks that you think they’ll like; ask them where they feel most called to be.Represent a variety of life stages. // Don’t overlook single people in the photos of your church life. In both the graphics inside your church and on your website and social media, use images of singles as well as couples and families. Feature perspectives from single people in your messaging too. You can visit Kaylee’s website at www.houseofaxios.com or find her on Instagram at @303Kaylee. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Leadership Pathway If you are trying to find, develop and keep young leaders on your team look no further than Leadership Pathway. They have worked with hundreds of churches, and have interviewed thousands of candidates over the past several years. They are offering a new ebook about five of the core competencies that are at the heart of the leadership development process with every church that they partner with…just go to leadershippathway.org/unseminary to pick up this free resource. Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Hey, everybody. Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad to have you tuned in today. You know every week we bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you and today is no exception. Excited to have my new friend, Kaylee Estes, with us. She was the Connections Pastor at a fantastic church at Colorado – Restoration Community Church – a fantastic church – you’re gonna want to ah be following along with them. Ah Kaylee was a Connections Pastor there which is a fantastic part of ah, you know the church as we’re trying to get people plugged in – something we love to talk about. Kaylee, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here. Kaylee Estes — Thank you, thank you – thank you for having me. Rich Birch — Um, why don’t you tell us about the kind of scope of the Connections role. Um, what was that? That looks hand look a little bit different at at churches. So talk to us about what that you know looks like. Kaylee Estes — Yep, yeah, it definitely looks different at all churches. So at Restoration the role was twofold. The biggest portion of my role was overseeing our small groups and groups ministry and then I also oversaw all of our first impressions, assimilation, that sort of thing as well. Rich Birch — Nice, okay and the to kind of tell us about ah Restoration a little bit. Like give us a sense of the you know, just the kind of style of ministry and how how did small groups fit into that. But just you kind of fill out the picture a little bit for folks that wouldn’t know. Kaylee Estes — Yeah, sure. Of course. So Restoration’s a nondenominational church and they are fantastic. They really emphasize excellence and they also emphasize um Bible knowledge, and really understanding what our faith looks like as well as making sure that we are growing and that we are also evangelizing – making sure that we’re going out to our city and and telling people about us. So small groups was a pretty integral piece for that. When I got started though they did not have anybody overseeing small groups, so I came on board and I got to really you know, jumpstart their ministry there, and and it was really cool because I was able to try a lot of new things and what didn’t work I, you know, threw out the window and kept going and tried new things. And by the end of the 3 years that I was their Connections Pastor I ended up tripling their their groups’s numbers and it was just a really thriving ministry so it was really fun. Rich Birch — It’s fantastic. very cool. Well I know from previous conversations as we’ve been connecting and getting ready for today that um, I’m really excited to have you on because this is one of those topics – it hard to believe; I think we’re 600 episodes in and this could actually maybe be germane to the problem. We’re almost 600 episodes in and I don’t think we’ve had this conversation, which is ah, and so I come confessing to you, my pastor, that we haven’t talked about this issue that we should be which is really the whole area of how we create space for single people in our churches. And I think so many times our churches are built around either couples or built around families and I know you’ve got some passion in this area. Um, let’s just start at kind of a broad level. Why should churches be worrying about thinking about creating a space for single folks in their community? Kaylee Estes — Yeah, so personally this has become a passion of mine because I am single, have been single unmarried, um forty years old so it’s been a while now. Um but wouldn’t change it, to be honest, and but in a broader sense the reason why it’s become such a passion of mine is that more and more people are single in our churches. And it’s from a few different aspects. So there’s there’s the fact that our younger generations are waiting longer to get married, and so therefore we’re going to have more single people because of that. And then also on the flip side of that, we have you know our divorce rates continue to increase and so we have more people who are divorced and so than they’re single. And then as people continue to increase their ah lifespans we’re going to see more and more widows and widowers. So across all age age gaps or age spans, we’re going to see more and more singles—um, unfortunately or fortunately, either way—um, coming into our church or that we can go and evangelize to. Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. You know, I know um I saw this chart once that was fascinating. It was looking at the age of the first marriage of, it was it was men um over a hundred years. And you know, the interesting thing about this chart was—and maybe I’ll find and put it in the show notes—was if you look back one hundred years ago um the average because of life expectancy was much lower, um, people were getting married in the last third of their life. Well that because of life expectancy has gone up that has even though in the last say twenty years we would say people are getting married later, they’re actually getting married in the percentage of their life way earlier which has this interesting kind of, you know, when you talk about widows on the back end, there’s interesting interesting stuff there. Kaylee Estes — Yep. Rich Birch — So let’s let’s dig in. Um, we’ve got, you know, a few thousand church leaders listening in and what would be, where do we need to start when we’re thinking about how do we create space for single people? How? What what are we doing? What do you see in churches that are like, ooh that’s like ah a problem like ah either whether it’s quick fixes or stuff that we should be thinking about? Um, you know how do we create a better a better community feeling for folks who aren’t aren’t married, for whatever reason? Kaylee Estes — Yeah, exactly. I think that, first of all, I think that a lot of times churches try to find some big fix, like how can we have a paradigm shift, or how can we do—which is great in a lot of a lot of areas—but I think that just some of the the key starting points um, the three that I have identified are actually really subtle and really simple. And the first one is really the language that you’re using surrounding your groups or your Ministry Names. So a lot of times people say oh well we have a singles ministry or we’re going to create a bunch of singles groups for our singles and so then they’ll be able to gather and you know hang out with each other, which is a good intention, right? That’s a great intention. However, for me personally, um and a lot of people I’ve talked to, we can’t stand it. When you put singles in a name. We just can’t, because the moment you do that you’ve now created like this pressure, or this um this perceived assumption that everybody in that group or that Ministry is wanting to date and that that’s a dating pool. Rich Birch — Hmm. Okay, okay. Kaylee Estes — And for a variety of reasons there could be people in there who don’t want to date. Um, they could be just feeling like they need a season of of singleness. They could be um, right after a divorce, they could have gone through a really hard season of depression or addiction and they’re just needing to kind of come out of that. Whatever the reason, they may not want to be put into a forced pressure situation where all of a sudden everybody who’s there knows that we’re all singles and we all might want to date. So you know, we have apps for that. We don’t need that in church and then. Rich Birch — Sure. Yeah isn’t that funny? That that’s an interesting um phenomenon I’ve definitely seen where it’s like any anytime we identify something as a singles event the assumption is that’s a bunch of people who are not wanting to be single… Kaylee Estes — Yes, yes. Rich Birch — …which is a funny – that’s that’s an odd kind of cultural thing for sure. Kaylee Estes — Yeah, well and part of that is um, you know for whatever reason historically um, the church sees singleness as a waiting period before you get married. Rich Birch — Okay, yep. Kaylee Estes — And so there’s this assumption that every single person wants to get married and wants to get married right now. And you know honestly, that’s just not true for again variety of reasons. And um like I said for the younger generations it’s just not true because they’re waiting. They’re wanting to um, experience life, work on their careers, go travel, do whatever they’re wanting to do, and so they’re waiting to get married. Um, so yeah, but what I so what I did as a Connections Pastor is I made sure, I intentionally made sure that we did not put the word singles anywhere. And so um when we had groups that started and I had someone who would come to me and say, hey I want to start a singles group. I’d go, great, that sounds wonderful – we’re not going to put the word singles in it. Um, you can, you know, call it the Wash Park Group (which is a location in Denver). You can call it, you know the 30-somethings group. Whatever you want to call it um, just don’t put the word singles in there. And you can make it coed if you want to. Because the truth is is that when you get a bunch of people in a room whether it’s a small group or a larger social ministry people who are single are going to find each other, just like people who are married are going to find each other. So we don’t we don’t need people telling us what to do. We’re we’re grown adults. We know what to do. Rich Birch — Mmm, interesting. Kaylee Estes — And the other reason for me too as a pastor is, I really want to keep that small group kind of sacred in a way because the small group specifically, you know, that’s where we’re supposed to come together as a community and grow and hold each other accountable, and learn, and and develop deeper relationship with God, and spiritual rhythms, and that sort of thing. And so I don’t want people walking into a small group thinking, oh who am I going to date from this small group? Like that just kind of weirds me out to be honest. Rich Birch — Sure. Sure, totally. So now have you found as a Connections Pastor there does seem to be two general schools of thought or two general approaches that churches take. One are kind of affinity-based groups that do that would lend themselves to the kind of like singles group or there’s the like 30-somethings-with-kids group, or there’s the like 40-somethings-bald-guys-who-like-technology group, which would be mine, or or there’s the or there’s the the kind of geographically-based groups that are more like hey let’s be in, like you mentioned, ah you know a particular neighborhood. From ah a single perspective is it better to lean more towards the the kind of community-based – is that is that a better more welcoming environment, or can it work in both approaches? Kaylee Estes — Honestly I think it can work in both approaches. I think if you’re a bigger church, then you have a lot more opportunity to do everything, right? Because if you have a bigger church then you’re going to have the people who are wanting to go and ride bikes forever, and there’s going to be singles or marrieds. And then there’s going to be people who want to be in the geographic location, and so on and so forth. And so bigger churches have a lot more flexibility. Um, if you’re a smaller church I—like um Restoration is, we see about 400 people on a weekend—um, you you really do need to think a little bit more broad, just because you don’t want to isolate singles and you also don’t want to pigeonhole them. And so you want to think more on the terms of a geographic location or broad age group. So 30-somethings or young adults or um, you know, mid-professionals or something like that where it’s a little bit broader. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Kaylee Estes — But you also don’t want it to be so broad that you end up with some 20s and 40s and 60s… Rich Birch — Right. Kaylee Estes — …because yes they can get along – I’m not saying they can’t; please hear me there. And yes, they can have fun. I have mentors who are older than me and I mentor younger people. So um I’m not saying that, but like I said you get a bunch of single people in a room and they’re going to be looking for someone else – potentially. Maybe not right now, but maybe someday down the road if and if and when they want to get married. And so you don’t want to put 20s and 40s and 60s together because a twenty year old does not need to be dating a sixty year old and vice versa. Rich Birch — Right. Kaylee Estes — Um, so you do want to kind of keep some boundaries in there. Rich Birch — Okay, very cool. So You said there were there were a number of things so I get this our language totally understand that what else should we be thinking about. Kaylee Estes — Yeah, so another thing that’s really simple for um, lead pastors for sure, but then also anybody who does social media marketing or any sort of communication coming from the church, is also a language thing. So it’s changing um, your stories, your metaphors, your examples – those sorts of things. So a lot of lead pastors, not all, but a lot of them are married, and so by default they will share stories from their marriage, or from a marital perspective, which again I totally understand and I get because that is easy for them, and also Jesus used a lot of marriage metaphors, so I I truly do understand that. But again, there’s more and more single people in our church and so it’s harder for a single person to hear a marriage story or a marriage metaphor and switch that into: well what does that look like for me as a single person? However, if you share a story that’s more relationally neutral, so you talk about friends, or you talk about coworkers or whatever. Then that married person can put themselves into that pretty fast, especially if you’re talking about friends because typically your spouse is one of your friends, and so you’ll just automatically think oh well I’ll just grab my spouse and go do x-y-z. Um, a simple one that I’m thinking about is a lot of times pastors like to talk about um you know, being a good neighbor. And so inviting neighbors over for dinner with your spouse, right? And so um, that happens a lot I hear that one a lot and that’s great, but again for a lot of people who have roommates who are single, who are living by themselves, like they don’t have a spouse. And so if we can say things like, hey go grab one of your friends, or go grab your roommate and invite your neighbors over for dinner or um, go play games with them. You know, game nights are super fun, or whatever it is, then that again that married person can put themselves into that story really really easily. And so it makes it a little bit more um, a little bit easier for the single person to be invited into that conversation, and not feel ostracized which is usually what ends up happening. Rich Birch — Love it. Kaylee Estes — And so similarly with social media, with other sorts of you know, communication again, make sure that you’re using examples that are I guess single-friendly for lack of a better term. Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm – no, that’s good. Kaylee Estes — Um, but always grab stories from, you know, the couples, the marrieds, the couples with kids, you know, whatever – also try and grab stories from single people. You know, how are single people stewarding their finances well? How are single people reaching their communities? And again that single person could be a widowed 42 year old. It could be a divorced 64 year old. It could be a never married 23 year old. But getting those different perspectives um, again helps those people not feel ostracized, not feel like they’re on the outside. Because there is plenty of messaging within a church talking about marrieds and families, and I always put families in quotations because that’s usually assuming that it’s a married person with children. Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes. Kaylee Estes — And there’s a lot of different families out there. Rich Birch — Yeah, the definition of family is pretty broad in most of our communities, right? Kaylee Estes — Yes. Rich Birch — And and we often do just portray family as mom and dad and kids, right? And that’s you know that’s not necessarily the case for sure. Kaylee Estes — Yes. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. I think that’s a great coaching around you know the language we use. And it’s a good reminder that you, know, we’ve seen this in other contexts, other podcasts that we’ve done, that particularly as the church grows, teaching, the kind of weekend teaching/preaching… Kaylee Estes — Yeah. Rich Birch — …whatever that’s called your church becomes a team effort – that there’s like multiple people contributing to that message… Kaylee Estes — Absolutely. Rich Birch — …and ensuring that someone who is single, or at least has that hat on is thinking about it from a single perspective, would be very helpful to be like… Kaylee Estes — Yeah. Rich Birch — …hey there’s you know there are probably some simple ways we could tweak this that that are not going to take any problems. It’s not gonna take away the messaging for people who are married with kids but could really open up the door a little bit more for single folks. Kaylee Estes — Yeah, and I’m actually really glad you brought that up because one of the things that Restoration did that I thought was really excellent is that um they had me as a single female on their teaching team calls. And so we had like you said a variety of people teaching, and I would be on those calls every single week, and it was really just so that I could sit there and say the things that you’re just now saying. So I could sit there and say ,oh hey like you just talked a lot about marriage like can you please do do something that’s not about marriage because people like me are just going to shut down, because we’re not there yet and we may never be. Rich Birch — Yeah. Kaylee Estes — So um, just finding that person that that you trust theologically, that you trust their opinion and asking them to be in those calls, or in those meetings is a really simple, easy way to make sure that when you’re structuring your series, when you’re structuring your messages, you have someone kind of checking checking that out for you. Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. Are there other areas where you could see that engaging a single you know like you say a trusted leader who’s single um are there other areas where you could say, hey this would be a good place to just bring them in the room and ask questions and and explore. There’s some other examples of that – the teaching one seems like a really obvious one to me. Kaylee Estes — Yeah, yep. Rich Birch — I’m like oh yeah, of course that’s like such a win. Are there other, you know, aspects of our – design of our experiences or, you know, those kind of things that would be really helpful you think? Kaylee Estes — Yeah, to be honest, the short and easy answer is invite them everywhere. Rich Birch — Sure, sure. Yes. Kaylee Estes — Because because here’s the thing, like a lot of times people make a lot of assumptions about singles instead of just asking the singles, what do you want to do, or how can I support you? And so no matter what the area is—whether it’s your your kid’s ministry, whether it’s your students’ ministry, if you have college your college ministry, your first impressions, greeters—whatever it is just ask. Ask them, you know, what what can we do better for you, or what do you want to do? Um, you know I have an example where we had a young lady. We had a college that’s really close to our church and we had a young lady who came in and and said, oh I really want to serve and so the person my colleague immediately put her on the greeting team. And said: great – we need greeters. Let’s put you on the greeting team. She’s like great. Okay. So she starts greeting. Well about three months later she comes up to us and says you know I’m really shy, and I can’t stand greeting. I actually really want to do the tech team. Rich Birch — Ah, sure. Sure. Yes. Yes. Kaylee Estes — And we’re like yes, we need people in the tech team. We always do. So we immediately switched her over and that was – that ended up being a positive experience because she was brave enough to come and talk to us but a lot of times people just get irritated, and they need to get angry, and to be honest, sometimes they leave the church because they’re like, wow you didn’t even ask; you just assumed. And um, that was ah a nice story because the assumption was also greeting, but to be honest, a lot of times for female singles the assumption is let me put you in kids. And I just personally that one ruffles my feathers because I… Rich Birch — Mmm, grates on you. Yes. Kaylee Estes — Um I don’t always want to assume that anyone wants to be with our children and also we want people who are with our children who are excited to be with our kids, right? We don’t want like quote unquote second tier and I’m not saying singles are second tier, or but or parents are, I’m just saying when you just automatically assume, oh well, we need help here so I’m just gonna put you here that… Rich Birch — Sure. Kaylee Estes — …that’s not the best way to build any ministry to be honest. Um, so really just asking questions and also another thing that I see happen a lot, and I literally have had colleagues say this to me, is they start asking single people to do multiple serving opportunities. So, oh you’re leading a small group. Great. Then that means that you can be um, you know a communion lead or you can be a first impressions lead, and also we’re gonna need help at parents night out so you’re gonna help with that too. And they just start heaping things on, and I’ve literally turned to my colleagues and been like, what are you doing? They’re going to be burned out and overwhelmed. And their response is, well they’re single – they have plenty of time. Rich Birch — Right. Kaylee Estes — And again that one drives me crazy. But it’s because just because we’re single doesn’t mean that we have tons of time. Rich Birch — Right, right. Kaylee Estes — Like yes, we do have some time that is more than a married person because we’re not investing in that marriage that married people are investing in. And we absolutely have more time than parents do ah hands down parents I just bow to you all. But um, but as singles we do have things that we’re doing. We have jobs just like everyone else. We make plans. We have friends and relationships that we’re trying to cultivate, and if we are choosing to date, well then we’re spending time dating and developing those relationships as well. And so you don’t want to burn your singles out. Rich Birch — Right. Kaylee Estes — And so don’t just automatically assume that they’re going to do two or three or four things. You know, really ask them. Ask them what they want to do. Ask them how they can be supported. Ask them if they want to potentially, you know, be on an advisory board or something like that to help you know, make sure that your social media is more friendly to singles – that sort of thing. But just ask questions. It’s really simple and we really appreciate it when he get asked. Rich Birch — Love it. That’s so good. That’s so so helpful. When you think about um this you know I’m sure that you’ve bumped into churches that are like super pro, you know, singles – they’re like, hey this is a great, you know, this is a great thing. And then it’s almost like you can you can smell it from a mile away you walk into a church and you’re like oh this just is not this is not a great, you know, place for singles. What would be you know, two or three of those things on the negative side? Kaylee Estes — Yeah. Rich Birch — You’ve been so positive today. You’re a positive and uplifting encouraging person. What would be some of those things that you as a single leader ah you know you sit in a really unique spot. You’re both single and you’re a leader in in the church that you can just pick out quickly, like man you we need to stop. We need to avoid these things because they just single folks can smell it from a while away. Kaylee Estes — You know when you walk into a building or um, walk into the foyer or whatever and all you see are pictures of couples and kids, then immediately you’re like oh great here we go. Because that right there, right? Imagery can set the tone for culture super fast. And so that one’s a big glaring one for me. Like it’s also a big glaring one for me for you know, um, showing different ages. Like just put a variety of people in your pictures. And that goes for your social media because a lot of times the quote front door is not walking into the building, but it’s going on to social media and it’s looking there. So for me, that’s a big glaring one, and then also um I would say just again, it’s it’s your messaging. It’s your language. So if someone sits in and on their very first sermon whether it’s in person or they’re listening to it online, and you don’t have any examples that include a single person or a single person’s perspective, then a red flag, red flag, red flag. Rich Birch — Right. Love it. Kaylee Estes — Um, and it just it’s just one of those things where you just really have to be as aware as you possibly can, and I know it’s hard from when you’re married. But um, yeah, you just really do have to work on it. Rich Birch — Love it. So helpful. As we’re kind of coming down to land today’s episode, anything else you’d like to share with us as we kind of wrap up today’s conversation? Kaylee Estes — Um, I just think bottom line I just want people to know that you know singles a lot of times get ah a bad rap as being selfish or or being self-centered, or whatever, because we we do cry out like this. Um, but but honestly it’s just because we want to be seen, we want to be heard, and we want to be known. And so that’s the simplest thing, again, is just go and engage the single people in your church. And just talk to them because that’s really all, we’re desperately wanting. Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. Love it. This has been so helpful – I really appreciate you ah you know being here today and helping us think through these issues. You’ve been so helpful for us as we wrestle through this issue and and hopefully it’s been encouraging for you listeners as you’ve been listening in. If people if people want to get in touch with you, kind of track with you on social media or any of that stuff, where do we want to send them online? Where’s the best place for them to to connect? Kaylee Estes — Yeah, they can find me on Instagram – um I think my Instagram handle—I know I should know this—but I think it’s 303kaylee Rich Birch — Nice. Great. Perfect. Kaylee Estes — Um, and so yeah, go ahead, find me on Instagram. I’m starting a blog and so you’ll start hearing more from me. And yeah I’d love to have any of you there and and engage with you there. So please do. Rich Birch — Perfect. Thanks, Kaylee – I appreciate you being on the show today. Thank you so much. Kaylee Estes — Yes, thank you so much, Rich.

Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Joe Boyd, lead pastor of Grace Fellowship in Minnesota. They are one of the fastest growing churches in the country as well as a church-planting church and have started 28 churches during their 34 years of service. Jesus changed the world with a small group. Groups help fulfill discipleship and fellowship functions, create a connection and family, plus are a critical component to helping your church close the back door. Listen in as Joe talks with us about how Grace Fellowship shifted their groups culture and saw a huge increase in engagement. Take a look at the groups. // When Joe first stepped into his role as lead pastor at Grace Fellowship, he took a look at the small groups within the church to gauge their health. Within his first three months in leadership, Joe visited each of the small groups and found that only 23% of the adults in the church were participating in groups. The groups that were in existence were strong and the members enjoyed them, however no new groups were being started.Create a plan ahead of time. // At this point Joe and his team made the commitment to shift from being a church with small groups to a church of small groups. They didn’t want to rush into things, so made a plan to launch more groups nine months out. Grace Fellowship looked to the Rooted experience at Mariners Church to provide training and brought their staff through it before rolling it out to the rest of the church. Both adults and youth were exposed to Rooted and the result was a 70% participation of adults and 100% participation of teens in groups.Drip it before you drop it. // Before relaunching groups, Joe dripped the topic to the congregation by talking about groups over and over. After the staff went through the Rooted experience, the church rolled it out to their leaders. By reimagining small groups, by modeling it, and then by challenging their leaders to carry it out, Grace Fellowship began building a new culture.Devote the resources. // As Grace Fellowship rolled out their plan for groups, they devoted a significant amount of time, money and key people to leading the process. They also built a campaign around the launch of groups through the fall and didn’t allow anything else to compete with it. This was tough on one hand because the church didn’t grow through the fall, but Joe saw existing people at the church consistently engaging and taking ownership of the church. Make it a priority. // While growth didn’t come in the fall for Grace Fellowship, it did come at the beginning of the new year. Now people were confident that if they invited their friends to church, they would have a positive experience. Make it a priority to get groups right because it will give you the foundation to grow and not have constant turnover.Slow down and work together. // If you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go with others. Slow down and spend time getting your team together to talk through a plan for groups. Not only does it allow everyone to bring their gifts and talents to the table to develop the plan together, but everyone will be bought-in when it comes time to roll out the plan.Have a leadership structure in place. // Some lead pastors may think that churches become successful and grow based simply on their outside appearance – making themselves look attractive and fun. But the secret behind a growing church is having a leadership structure in place that is focused on developing and retaining leaders.Focus on groups. // Looking to the future, Joe believes one thing that will scale up will be groups and group pastors. In groups you have to care for leaders and identify additional leaders for new groups so that you can make room for the number of people coming into your church. If you want to be a church of small groups as you grow, you need more leaders in the groups ministry than just about anywhere in your church. This will add to the success and health of your church moving forward.Grow slow and strong. // A lot of times we get hung up on fast growth in our church. But Joe reminds us that compound growth that is slow over time can actually grow our church into one of the largest. We can have plans to grow, but we need to actually focus on and care for the people rather than just the numbers. You can learn more about Grace Fellowship at www.findgrace.com. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: CDF Capital Since 1953, CDF Capital has helped Christians and churches embrace their part in this story by providing the 3 kinds of capital every congregation needs for growth—Financial Capital, Leadership Capital, and Spiritual Capital. CDF Capital’s XP Summit Cohorts provide an exclusive, year-long experience that brings together hand-selected global ministry leaders and your peers in an intimate, small-group setting. Visit http://cdf.capital/UnCohort to learn more and enroll today! Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Well hey, friends – welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. You know every week we try to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you and I know today is going to be no exception to that. Super excited to have my friend Joe Boyd with us. We’ve known each other for a few years and it’s so exciting to have him on the podcast. We just were catching up from not having talked for a number of years – so good to have Joe with us. Joe is the lead pastor of one of the fastest growing churches in the country. It’s called Grace Fellowship in the Minnesota part of the world. They have one location, church online, it’s one of the fastest growing churches, they’re doing lots of incredible things in the Twin City Metros area. Welcome to the show, Joe; so glad you’re here. Joe Boyd — Rich, it’s great to be back and great to see you and catch up and I’m looking forward to to sharing some insights that we’ve had around small groups this year. Rich Birch — Fill out the picture for us about Grace Fellowship kind of paint the picture a little bit tell us a little bit about the church. Give us a a bit of a flavor of the church. Joe Boyd — Yeah, um, Grace Fellowship is a church that’s 34 years old. It’s actually one of the few churches in the country that has that it’s a church-planting church in their bylaws and we’ve started 28 churches in those 34 years. Rich Birch — That’s amazing. Joe Boyd — Um, and so there’s a long history of ah reproduction in this church and I’m the second pastor. Rich Birch — That’s amazing. Joe Boyd — So the first pastor was here over 30 years and then they had a little over a year interim, and I answered the call to come up from Kansas to the Twin Cities and take over and, man, it’s been a wild ride stepping into you know the world turning upside down in the midst of all this. So yeah, it’s been a fun ride. Rich Birch — Yeah, what a time to what what a time to start in a church. It’s great. Joe Boyd — Yeah, yeah I like to think that it’s like dog years, so the past three years have been, you know the longest 21 years of my life. Rich Birch — Yes, absolutely yeah, yeah, yeah, so true that is so true. Love that. Well we are going to talk about groups and and I you had shared a little bit about what was happening at Grace, and I frankly I found that astonishing. It was one of those like lean in like, what-what-are-you-talking-about, you know, thing which is pretty incredible. But set the scene for us. Give us a sense of kind of what’s the group’s culture been like. What ah you know, kind of pre- some of the changes you’ve made as you think about what what did that look like. Give us kind of talk us through what that was kind of before um, the in the before times before you had made some changes on that area. Joe Boyd — Yeah, coming in coming into Grace Fellowship… um I was I’ve made a shift. For a long time I was always focused on church growth and and I’m a starter – I’m a catalytic leader, and and for the ten years prior at my previous church we would grow but we’d have this back door. And so it wasn’t until the last three years I was there that we finally started to realize groups are so critical. And so we we started to make some changes and the church got way healthy. And um, and so when I came in that was one of my number one questions was how are we doing on groups? And they they said well you know, we’re doing pretty good, and and I personally made it a mission in the first first three months to visit every one of the small groups. Rich Birch — Oh nice. Joe Boyd — Now um inside of a church that was like 600/700 people um you would think that would take longer. But what I found was that only 23% of the adults in the church were participating in small groups. Rich Birch — Right. Joe Boyd — Now what I will say is that the groups I visited were very strong. There were even groups that had been meeting for fifteen or twenty years, and and so I didn’t want to turn any dials and mess those up. Um, but but what I did find was that they weren’t starting new groups. And so um, you know the way we would classify that is would say it was a church with small groups but not a church of small groups. So what what began was a commitment that we’re going to make this shift. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Joe Boyd — And it’s not going to happen overnight. Um, you don’t you don’t birth a baby in night. Ah you know without nine months, and the bigger the plane the longer the runway. So we said that we would launch groups in the fall. Um, and that was about nine months out. And what we learned was that we needed ah a plan to get there, so we leaned into what Mariners Church had done through Rooted and did the Rooted experience which was really good. A couple of real practical things: if you’re gonna be serious about groups, you’ve got to make a priority to identify money and people and time to it. And then we took our entire staff through Rooted before we did it as a church and… Rich Birch — Oh yeah, yeah, that’s cool yet. Joe Boyd — …That was really good because then they were able to speak with confidence that this was good. And um and I had one of my strongest leaders directing this and we started to add groups and follow the process, and when we pulled the trigger, the adults and the youth did this in our church and um, when we got to the end of it, we had 70% participation in the adults. Rich Birch — That’s amazing. We had a 100% participation with the teenagers and and and lives were being changed, we saw people grow groups form out of this and… Rich Birch — Yes. Joe Boyd — And then that led us to turning the corner and going into the the 2020, which none of us saw coming… Rich Birch — Yep, yes, yes. Joe Boyd — …and and what happened there, Rich, was like everybody – I mean we got shocked, but what I believe was that God was already on the path of of creating the the ark or the lifeboats for for people. And so what we found was that we weathered the storms of isolation much better because the vast majority of our church were in groups. And so we saw care happen. We saw all those things happen. Now over the past you know year year and a half what we begin to notice, no matter how many times we’d call, checkup on people that were not plugged in, the vast majority of people who did not stay with the church for one reason or another ah, we’re not in groups… Rich Birch — Were not groups. Yeah, yeah, totally. Joe Boyd — …and and and and so so the groups really became the main force of the church, the way we communicated, the way we cared, and it was that was that was our saving grace. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, love it. Let’s dive into that a little bit. You know one of the things I’ve I’ve joked about and this is a part of why these numbers caught my attention was you know it seems like most churches can get a third, you know, maybe 30% between you know in that range of people in groups by just having groups. Like it’s like if you have groups you can get that many. Like and and that I don’t want to discourage anybody that’s listening in you know if you’re trying hard and that’s where you’re at, but that that is that seems to be the the dynamic. The thing that I found fascinating about this story was you were actually lower than that, you know, you were lower than the you know what that kind of like benchmark is and then have seen tremendous growth. Let’s pull apart what you did in that in that ramp that kind of nine months. How did you get it ready? We loved Rooted. We’ve had actually had Erin on from Mariners – that was I don’t know maybe two years ago so we’ve and we’ve had many churches talk about just how great it’s been, but let’s let’s pull apart what kind of happened in those nine months to get ready for that. I understand you went through with your staff, but what are the things could we kind of ah, help leaders to think about as it you know if they’re looking to try to increase their engagement on the group side in ah you know these months and and years. Joe Boyd — Well I would say first and foremost our elders pulled away and we really prayed about the priorities of the church and that was the one that kept coming through that we knew we were going to engage our community and serve our community but we really knew we wanted to get discipleship and groups down because. It it it fulfills so many functions of the church it fulfills fellowship but it also fulfills discipleship and it creates this connection and family. Jesus changed the world with a small group. Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Joe Boyd — And and so we we we think about that a lot. And so that was the first thing, having the support, having prayed through that through a retreat, coming back and being resolved about it. And then what happened was begin to, as lead pastor, begin to drip it before we dropped it. I would sprinkle in and just talk about small groups, small groups, small groups all the time. and. And as we were building up to it in Minnesota the summers are kind of a time when people really get out and go north and go to the cabins and go to lakes and, but we continue to work through that time preparing for these moments where we were gonna we were building the team that was praying. So simultaneously we had the the staff going through it as quickly as we could to have the experience all experiences, and we process that what was good what what, you know, what did we learn. And and then we begin to roll it out to our leaders and we were building this culture by reimagining small groups, by modeling it. And then challenging our leaders to carry it out. And and we had a plan. We devoted significant amounts of resources. When we were at 23% we weren’t really spending very much money on groups, and we weren’t spending a lot of time on groups. We weren’t preaching and teaching about it. And we definitely didn’t have a full time designated person to it. Once we did that, that’s whenever things started to move forward. Rich Birch — Right, right. Joe Boyd — Um, the the other thing we did was we we built up to a campaign. We did not compete against this time. Rich Birch — Yeah. Joe Boyd — Um, as ah as a catalytic, evangelistic, outreach-oriented pastor, all right – you know me to know that’s true. Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes. Joe Boyd — Um, it took everything out of me, because when you launch a ten week series in the fall—which is a prime time for growth potentially—um I thought, well, we’re gonna just do this, but this was what we were doing. And and so we weren’t really growing. All the way up through Thanksgiving we didn’t really grow. But what I saw was the consistency of people coming and engaging. And another thing we noticed… Rich Birch — Right, right, right. Joe Boyd — …was that people quit saying “your church” and started calling it “their church”. Rich Birch — Oh that’s great. That’s great. Love that. Joe Boyd — As we ah as we saw people engage, they took ownership for the church. We had the funniest story that I heard in this whole thing was that um one of the group leaders um, was invited by a woman to come to the church 10 years prior. She was about to start Rooted and ran across that person—who didn’t go to the church anymore—invited that woman who originally invited her to the church back to the church… Rich Birch — Right. Oh gosh; oh my goodness. Joe Boyd — …she got into the groups, and here’s the best part – she started taking spiritual steps and that lady got baptized. Rich Birch — Wow! I love it. Joe Boyd — It was it was just crazy. So so so we got really stable and people took ownership of the church and um, we celebrated it, and I’m not good at that – I’m always onto the next thing… Rich Birch — Yep sure, let’s go to the next thing. Yeah. Joe Boyd — …but we celebrated it, and that was a critical moment. And then we set up hey here’s what’s next, and we went through Christmas, and we started in January, and that’s when our church really started to explode because people were confident that if they brought their friends, their friends would have the experiences they were having. Rich Birch — Yeah. Joe Boyd — And and so so making it a priority to get groups right actually gave us a foundation to grow and not have that constant turnover. Rich Birch — Um, yeah I love this. Joe Boyd — So those were just some of the big wins. Rich Birch — I love it. You know, let’s talk about the series piece of it because you know this is one of those um things that we hear with regularity as we talk with churches that are not only um, you know seeing a higher levels of engagement in and the group side, but are growing as a church – that they’re dedicating time in the fall and in the winter. um for you know, kind of ah an all church campaign. Um, you know it could be Rooted, it could be—you know there’s a lot of these out there—The Red Letter Challenge. There’s a lot of ways to do this, but it’s the idea of like let’s all focus for a certain amount of weeks on kind of a single idea. We’re going to give you some resources, we’re going to encourage you to get into a group. Um, what would be some of the the kind of outcomes from what you did that that first year? Have you continued to do that? Why or why not? Let’s talk through that series a little bit. Joe Boyd — Yeah, we did. Um, we the following year we did another series. We didn’t go 10 weeks we went 7. Um and we wrote it. We wrote our own but we modeled the Rooted method. And and so we wrote “What’s a Galatian?” and went through the book of Galatians as a church. Rich Birch — Oh that’s fun. Joe Boyd — And then um and and then we’ve also this year we did History Makers which takes us through the first 7 chapters of Acts. Um, so we’ve made it a commitment, a rhythm for us, that when we come back in the fall. We’re going to to start off in the fall and go to the end of October, maybe the start of November, and really get a groups’ push. Rich Birch — Yes. Joe Boyd — Um that is all church-focused and very in the Bible – book-heavy. Um, we also did a push this past year in February and March on relationships. I wrote a book that was in-house in our church called The Secret Sauce of Relationships, and we did the same thing there and we were seeing a boost in groups at that time because coming out of 2020 people were so isolated that they were desperate for relationships, and we were trying to create a habit of groups. Because you know when people don’t go to church, um, when they miss church they begin to not miss church. Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.. Joe Boyd — And so they get out of habit and out of routine. So we were trying to create a reason to build on those groups and we added a few groups. It wasn’t a lot but we added a few and we were building up steam and so when we did History Maker, which included video of the original people that started the church… Rich Birch — Oh that’s cool. Joe Boyd — …and in conjunction with Acts and the story of Acts. Um, we made a jump and we didn’t even realize we made it until October – the end of October – because we measure all of October and we measure all of February for groups participation and those are the 2 times we measure. And we jump from 70% to 93%. Rich Birch — That’s unreal, dude. That’s crazy. Joe Boyd — Um and it and that’s in a year where we grew over 50% from the year before in adults coming out of all those.… Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s unreal. Joe Boyd — Yeah yeah, it’s, Rich, I’m telling you this is so not like it’s it’s not… Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s crazy. Joe Boyd — There wasn’t a really smart person that came… well there was: God. Jesus Christ came up with this plan. Rich Birch — Yes, yes, well and friends, I know, listen I just want to underline this. Um, you know Joe’s leading one of the fastest growing churches in the country. It would be really easy for you to say, well, it’s easy to grow from 20 to you know, 90% in groups by by shrinking the church just to have less people attend and then you’ll have… But that’s not what’s happening. You’re seeing both increased engagement in groups and growth. You know from a kind of top line or weekend service point of view, which is which is amazing. That’s incredible to see. That’s that’s amazing. Praise God. And like you say, that that you know a big part of this is, you know, He’s moving in His people which is incredible, but that’s amazing. I love that, Joe. Joe Boyd — Yeah, and in um, you know the interesting thing about about about our church is that um this church -God is really doing something. I would say in a lot of ways there’s a lot of tradition, a lot of history in this church of doing it ah, you know the way we always did it, and um and our elders and our staff and key leaders in the church have really been leaning into what the Holy Spirit’s doing and what we’re hearing. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. Love that. Joe Boyd — And I’ll tell you we we quit we quit chasing cool. Like I was the guy… there’s a lot of leaders and a lot of pastors out there that, I don’t know if you were like me, but I didn’t really know what to do so I’d look to see what the the hot churches were doing reaching people… Rich Birch — Sure. Yeah. Joe Boyd — …and and I’m like worked for them, let’s do that. And and and a lot of my early leadership was very, was more of an echo than a voice. Um and we started to really spend time listening to people and getting comfortable with where God placed us, and who we are, and I quit being a lone ranger leader that was driving fast and going by myself. Rich Birch — Love that. Joe Boyd — And I slowed down because I believe that if you want to go fast, go by yourself. But if you want to go far, go with others. Rich Birch — Right; love that. Joe Boyd — And so by slowing down and going with the team and and and seeing the gifts and the talents and letting the team help come up with the plan on how you do this, the buy-in was so much greater, and it seems… Listen, to every catalytic leader, you’re gonna think I’m crazy when I say this, but slowing down and getting your team together is—even if it feels like it’s slow and for me there were painful moments where I was like, seriously, like this doesn’t feel fast enough— Rich Birch — Right. Joe Boyd — Um, it was the best decision we ever made. Rich Birch — Love it. Joe Boyd — Was the best decision we ever made. Rich Birch — So ah, can I ask you a question from, you know, as ah I’m not a lead pastor; I’ve been in that kind of second seat – that’s where I’ve spent most of my time. And there seems to be a lot of lead pastor types out there um who—and I’m sure it’s not any of them that are listening into this podcast—but who seem to pay lip service to groups. They’re like no, no, no groups are really important, like they’re really really important. But then it it just doesn’t translate in either their own actions, like you saying hey I’m going to go and, you know, visit all our groups. Or it doesn’t translate in the way they prioritize their time, or they don’t see um, you know they’re not kind of structuring things around the church to to um, you know to really help and aid the the groups’ thing. Why do you think that is, and what would you say to a lead pastor who’s maybe a little bit skeptical, or just isn’t really into the the groups thing? What would you say to them? Joe Boyd — I would say this – I’ve studied…I had I had the privilege of studying some of the fastest growing, healthiest churches in the country before I started my last church. And if you look at what gets attention um, you think that that’s the solution. Rich Birch — Right. Joe Boyd — So largely content is is pushed out like crazy. If you want to hear great preaching… listen, the reason why American Church has shifted so much was because everybody realized, oh there’s great preaching on other churches in the internet and I’m home anyway so I’m gonna watch one of these communicators. Um. Rich Birch — Right, right, right. Joe Boyd — And I think that a lot of pastors think, oh the reason their church is big because of what they preach about, and the way that they preach, or that they’re creative, or I have to dress a certain way, or I have to ah vibe. I mean it’s it’s like buying a car by evaluating the way it looks on the outside. Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. That’s good. Joe Boyd — Great paint job. Super cool look, but but here’s the thing very little time gets focused on the mechanics work where you lift the hood up, you check the engine, doesn’t even have an engine. Um, you know how does that work? Rich Birch — Right. Joe Boyd — And and I would say that churches that are growing, and and pastors, I promise you there are people watching this right now that you’re better preachers than some of the 2000 and 3000 person church pastors that you’ve seen online. And you scratch your head and you go why? Why is this? Well it’s largely because there’s a leadership structure in place that is focused on retaining and developing leaders. And and and here’s the here’s the thing I came away with. In Isaiah 49 there’s this place where it says that that God hid me in the shadow of his hand. And the thought that I had was that… or the question I asked myself was am I more am I more concerned with being discovered, or am I more concerned with being developed? Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. Joe Boyd — And and and I really think that if you want to see healthy things, think about this: Jesus drew crowds, but he sent them away. When he had crowds He sat them in groups and had his disciples lead and care for them. Um Jesus spent an enormous amount of time on groups. Forming groups, identifying and raising up leaders is very hard work. It often happens behind the scenes. Rich Birch — Yeah. Joe Boyd — Um, it is not quick. It is not easy. We’ve all preached these great messages that cast vision and direction, but there was a structure for it… Rich Birch — Yep. Joe Boyd — …and so it just fades away. And so you have to lay the train tracks to run the train. And I believe that groups, and I believe leadership development in the church, are those train tracks. Rich Birch — Right, right. Joe Boyd — And I just wasted enormous amounts of time preaching really cool stuff that didn’t have train tracks and it didn’t go anywhere. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, totally yeah. Joe Boyd — That’s what I would say I think it’s a lack of knowledge um of just knowing how that part works and and it’s a lot of work. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that’s true. I love that, Joe. And I you know I think there is a real… I think you’ve you’ve really echoed and hit on an important point there where, you know, a lot of times we are we’re appeal we, you know we get drawn in by fast-growing churches and like what’s going on there, and and we miss the substrate underneath there of all this groups and relational stuff that’s holding it up that if that’s not there those churches don’t sustain over the extent over… you might get a pop of growth, but it won’t you won’t continue to see that. All right. It’s very cool. So I love we didn’t really even get into the pandemic. Obviously people were you kind of hinted towards this during that season, um, you know where you’re in lockdown and all that the groups provided the primary care engine and all of that and then we’ve now see this huge bump. You know your 9 out of 10 people attending groups – that’s incredible. When you look to the future, kind of peer up over the horizon a little bit, what do you think is next on the groups front for you guys? How are you, you know, what what questions are you still wrestling with/are you still thinking through as you’re thinking about how you continue to keep people plugged into groups? What are the you know, kind of what are you thinking about in the future when you think on this this groups issue for your church? Joe Boyd — Yeah, as we think about our time resource and and staffing allocations on this, um out of out of all the things in our church that will probably scale up, it’s going to be groups and group pastors. Um, and and here’s what I mean. We we have a worship experience, okay, so we’re only going to have so many people on stage preaching. We’re gonna have so many people leading on worship. Those services are going to, you know the the number of people that can participate is not as dependent on the number of people that we hire on staff to lead or invest the time. But that’s not true in groups. In groups, there’s a point where you you have to care. So if you go back to the Jethro principle in Exodus, you know that you know some can lead to tens and hundreds and fiftys, and and so we know that we need to continue to scale and identify additional leaders that can lead groups so that we can continue to add to those numbers um, so that they’re supported. Because if we if we think, oh—and I used to think this too—like I was a groups pastor and I thought you just need one groups pastor and develop people underneath. But the problem is we’re living in a very transient culture right now and people are moving and shifting and and you need relational stability in your leadership. And so we’re looking to develop those leaders. We’re continuing to develop care leaders underneath that care for you know, five to eight small group leaders at a time. We’re trying to strengthen that part of the body as much as we possibly can, um and and and so when you see that succeed you need to lean into it more… Rich Birch — Right. Joe Boyd — …because you need more leaders in that groups ministry than just about anywhere in your church, if you’re going to make the shift of being a church of small groups. Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. Joe Boyd — And where you continue to grow. And and so that’s it for us. We’re praying through that. And we’re just like everybody else – we’re we’re facing the realities of our economy and you know, giving may not be as strong as it was before, but we have to lean in on the most important discipleship aspects of our church because that’s what’s going to lead to the the success and health of our church moving forward. Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. So Good. We didn’t really talk about this ahead of time, but you know I know a part of the passion for why you went to the church that you’re at is its desire to plant more churches. You’ve mentioned this. It’s a really a replicating Church. It’s um, that’s like a whole other conversation we could have around how do we continue to be that as a church, and what does that look like for the future? How do these two things fit together as you think about kind of replication in the future, as you think about planting more churches? Um, how does the kind of what’s happened there—the story that God’s writing on the group side—how do you see those all fitting together as you as you look to the future? Joe Boyd — Well I think um I think one thing is really true – you reproduce who you are. I mean look at your kids, right? I mean they they’ve got… there’s there’s uniqueness to them and there’s gifting to them, but largely your values and the life experiences they learn get reproduced because… Growing up I always said, well I’ll never do that when I grow up, and then you find yourself in that situation and you do what you experienced growing up. Um, so I think the same thing’s true about the churches that you reproduce. Um and and looking back I was in a church that helped start 10 churches in 10 years, and some of them were different and some went different paths but largely they followed the model that we had, and unfortunately for the first 6 or 7 years we really didn’t have this group health thing as a priority. And the early churches suffered for that… Rich Birch — Right. Joe Boyd — …because they were preaching the way we preached and doing what we do and think oh it’ll work for us and and and and I just didn’t know enough. Um here, when I came in the focus was we are going to get as healthy as we can because if people follow us we we wanted least say, hey we this is real. It’s biblical. It’s stable. Um, you know a lot of times we get hung up on the fast growth but compound growth that’s slower over time, like the difference between the fast-growing churches and the largest churches in America um, largely has a lot to do with time. And and a lot of people don’t even realize that if you had 10% growth over 15 years or 20 years, your church could potentially be one of the largest churches in America… Rich Birch — Absolutely yeah, absolutely, you know, for sure. Joe Boyd — …um, and we miss that. Rich Birch — And way better to manage way easier to manage that growth. Yeah, way easier to manage it. Yes, yes. Joe Boyd — And doesn’t freak people out because people hear, oh you’re fast growing. They think: you care about numbers and not people. And that’s not the heart of pastors… Rich Birch — Yes. Joe Boyd — …because I know a lot of the the pastors that are fast-growing church leaders, but but it’s a perception. we deal with… Rich Birch — Yep, yep. Joe Boyd — …and and and so but you’re right, you can build something a little slower and and make it healthy. But the to answer your question about multiplication. We have a vision to help start a hundred churches that multiply by 10 each. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing. Joe Boyd — And we’re focused on mid-sized cities in America um, and right now the pandemic has created a shift from the large urban centers back to the the mid-size cities. And what I would say is that Jesus was born in a small town. He he did most of his ministry in Galilee (midsize), and then ultimately he was in Jerusalem which was their largest Jewish center. Um, but midsize cities, in my opinion, are small enough to change, but big enough to matter. Rich Birch — Right, right. Joe Boyd — Because the small towns mimicked midsize and the large cities replicate or multiply what happens in mid-sized cities… Rich Birch — That’s good. Joe Boyd — …and so over the next 30 to 40 years, we want to invest in starting churches there, and and that niche because we believe there’s going to be this move from small town to mid-size to the urban centers. And this is going to be the sending church. And so we’ve got a 10X church network we’re working on. Exponential’s been looking at it and and given thumbs up on it, and New Thing is thumbs up and said yeah, and so we’re seeing it converge. And my denomination, they’re they’re leaning into this, and so that’s that’s a passion, but but for me I believe we want groups to be the driving force around that health and stability. Rich Birch — Yeah I love that – I love that. We’ll have to have you on at another point and talk about the you know the the multiplication vision there. And and I just think that’s so great and so good. I you know I know, one of the things I’ve wondered you know, and have seen that unfortunately you know, there was like a pause there on so many of these multiplication efforts for a good year or eighteen months of you know, churches – they just stopped thinking about those things. Because they were everybody was freaked out about you know, you know, their own thing. Now that seems to be turning. It seems like okay, now we’re back to planting churches. We’re seeing new churches open. We’re seeing people back into campus expansion that were doing it before, but I know that’s your heart as well to see like, hey we want we want to continue to encourage that. Joe, this has been a great conversation – anything else you want to share just as we wrap up today’s episode? Joe Boyd — Um I would just say to anybody who’s listening to this. Um, if you’re if you’re a leader of a church or you have any influence on the discipleship of the church. Um, really really focus in on groups. Um. I didn’t for a long time and I think that was pride blinding me, or ignorance blinding me, and um I just can’t stress enough that really take a deep dive and really ask God what he’d like to do in and through groups or discipleship in your church, and then do what God tells you to do because that that could be a big game changer. Rich Birch — Love it. So good Joe. Appreciate this. I’d love to point more people in your direction. If people want to track along with your church and follow along, where do we want to send them online to do that? Joe Boyd — Yeah, if um, if you want to find what we’re doing our website’s easy. It’s findgrace.com because that’s what we want. We want everyone to experience grace. And on social media you can find all our social media links there. Some of our social’s from previous Grace Fellowship MN so it’s a little bit easier to go to findgrace.com first and then track us from there. Rich Birch — And then go jump from there. Good. Joe Boyd — Um, yeah, and you can find staff and contact them if you have questions about what we’re doing. Rich Birch — That’s great. Joe Boyd — We’re a team effort. We’ve got great people that can that are here to help. Rich Birch — Love it. Joe, thanks so much for being on the show – really appreciate you and cheering for you and your ministry.

Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Matt Slocum, executive pastor at Victory Life Church in Battle Creek, Michigan. Conflict is inevitable in relationships and it’s important to handle it well. Matt is talking with us today about how Victory Life Church sought to help its staff get better at having crucial conversations as the church grew. Develop a system. // When a church is small it tends to be more relational and can handle day to day tasks without systems and “family rules”, but all of that changes as a church grows. Even with a mission statement, a growing church can suddenly discover that it isn’t doing enough to communicate expectations to the expanding staff, and there are a lot of gray areas left.Honoring others. // After some issues of conflict, the church realized that people hadn’t necessarily been doing anything wrong, but they were feeling dishonored. So the leadership developed some governing core values to help them communicate with each other when problems come up. These core values are different than bylaws or an employee manual; they deal with more day-to-day communication. When something happens, it allows the staff to fill in the gaps with trust and say to a coworker, “I know you didn’t mean it this way, but I felt dishonored when this happened…”Coin conversations. // Victory Life had their core values minted on a challenge coin as a tool for the staff and core lay leaders. When conflict arises the staff can sit down to have a “coin conversation” with another staff member and everyone understands what that means. This conversation is a time when people let their guard down and move forward for the purpose of unity and restoration. The coin is a physical reminder to have a conversation rather than just arguing, blaming each other or leaving things unresolved.Take a step back. // Matt reminds us that it may take a few days to be ready to have a coin conversation. If you’re looking to win an argument, you’re probably not ready to have a conversation. But if you can emotionally get to a point of desiring restoration, and wanting the best for the other person in spite of your being hurt, then that’s a good place to start.Four core values. // The four core values at Victory Life are: faithful, teachable, honoring, and excellence. These governing values are embraced by the staff and are also taught in membership classes to the church. Victory Life doesn’t shy away from communicating that if people embrace these four values, they will be challenged, but it will lead to growth and being a part of an amazing community and environment.Teach your teams. // Because of the core values and coin conversations Victory Life Church has, the staff team is strong and can readily recognize issues that come up. Still, it’s important to take the time to coach and lead your team members so that they feel equipped to have a crucial conversations with their teams and colleagues. Help your team to understand how to get good at conversations and see the real issues underneath what is happening. Remember to be honoring, but also honest.Get your staff’s feedback. // When you’re developing things like core values, engage your staff to get buy-in and see what resonates with them. Ask them what they think the real issues are, and then use that information to develop the foundation of your values. You can learn more about Victory Life Church at www.victorylife.church. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: FiveTwo It’s hard to know how to grow your church. Especially as you come out of a pandemic in a changing culture. But you desperately want to. You believe the church can still grow. The good news? You don’t have to do it all yourself. In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to find the right group of people who will help carry the load and bring growth to your ministry. You’ll be relieved. People will be helped. Your church will grow. Download this guide TODAY for an easy 5-step plan to get the right leaders on board. We’ll give you 5 surprisingly easy steps to activate your congregation. Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Well, hey everybody – welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Every week we try to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you, and today is absolutely no exception. I am excited for today’s conversation. We’ve got Matt Slocum with us. He’s executive pastor at one of the fastest growing churches in the country – Victory Life Church in Battle Creek, Michigan. The thing I love about this church is Michigan is not the kind of place you would say, that’s a place where fast-growing churches come from. Matt Slocum — Yeah. Rich Birch — Ah, that’s a tough place to to to to minister out of and I’m so excited to have Matt on the show with us. Welcome to the show today, Matt. Matt Slocum — Thanks, Rich, for having me today. Rich Birch — Why don’t you start by telling us a little bit about Victory Life – kind of give us the flavor of the church. Help us kind of understand the church and then tell us about your role. Matt Slocum — Sure, well um, Battle Creek, Michigan we’re a home Cereal City Capital of the world. They say this is the headquarters of Kellogg’s so yeah, this… Rich Birch — Okay, nice Cereal City USA. Nice. Matt Slocum — That’s right, yeah. Um, Victory Life – actually this month we’re celebrating 20 years of being a church which is great. Rich Birch — Nice. Wow. Matt Slocum — Been here the whole time; helped actually launch it twenty years ago. Was an automation engineer for 13 years but felt a call into ministry… Rich Birch — Wow. Matt Slocum — And so we just supported the local church. And about twenty years ago when it was launched it was about 65 people. And pre-covid we were pushing about 2000 so God is really consistent, healthy growth over the years… Rich Birch — Love it. Matt Slocum — Um and so yeah, multiple building campaigns and expansions of our facilities as well as ministry. So love the love the church same same senior pastor the whole time. My family’s been attending for 20 years and excuse me, and I’ve been on staff for almost fourteen now as a pastor so, then executive pastor for 10 years. So learning a lot always learning more. Rich Birch — Very cool. Wow yeah I love it. Well you know one of the one of the well why don’t you talk about the kind of how you guys define Executive Pastor. I know you know I’ve joked with XPs—that’s really my ah, that’s the seat I’ve been in for the longest—and you know it seems like every XP you talk to, although there’s some overlap, you know it looks a little different in every church. Kind of define that give us kind of show tell us to talk to us what’s the sand sandbox that you find yourself playing in regularly? Matt Slocum — Sure. When I came on staff I was handling the finances and I was the children’s pastor… Rich Birch — Oh yes. Matt Slocum — …so I had a unique dual role. Two part-time positions to to make a way. And our staff was small – we had four pastors on staff, I think, at the time. And I just grew, I grew into an associate pastor, was life groups, things like that. As we grew our staff grew and ah our senior pastor had nine direct reports. Ah so we were very flat. Rich Birch — Hmm, yes. Matt Slocum — Ah, but he’s the type of guy’s entrepreneur – Pastor James is – and just a forward-charging, great guy and so he just liked to be involved in everything, and we had a consultant come in and said, what you’re doing is not good, right? Rich Birch — Right. Right. Not sustainable. Matt Slocum — Kind of Moses father-in-law type thing. And he said, you needed an executive pastor to kind of handle that and we think Matt’s that guy. So um, in all that wisdom we, I was promoted to executive pastor. So it was Pastor James, myself, and then I had nine people reporting to me. Rich Birch — Ah, wait a second! Matt Slocum — And within a literally I think within six months I burned out – um chronic fatigue syndrome. And worked through that for a year they put me on a medical sabbatical I mean we just we were running five and six services. It was just very, you know, very busy, stressful. And then we said let’s keep a one to five ratio with direct reports, and so for a number of years it I just had five reports. And then we just recently recently reorged in this fall and ah now there I’m one of three executive pastors now. Rich Birch — Okay, great. Matt Slocum — So we have kind of the mop – ministry, operations, and programming. So I’m over operations… Rich Birch — Yep yep, very cool. Matt Slocum — …facilities, administration finances, things like that. Rich Birch — Love it. Matt Slocum — And then Pastor John, he’s my other one of our other executive pastors. He’s over ministry. And then Pastor Tim just promoted up to programming. Rich Birch — Oh love it. Matt Slocum — So there’s four on the executive team. So the three executive pastors and the senior pastor and we’re all very close, good friends. We’ve been through battles together, and that relational component I think is really what makes things extraordinary. Rich Birch — Love it. Well and yeah I love that because you’ve you’ve really positioned for growth for the future. You know what you’ve done there, I know you know that that that kind of a couple two or three executive pastors, that kind of leadership team thing is really common as we see churches go from two thousand to five thousand as you kind of make that jump. So I’m excited about that; I’m excited to see the future of Victory Life and kind of where you know where that goes. Well one of the things about leading at that level that I know you know is really you end up serving in this kind of chief of staff. You have a lot of people and I love that you even led there. It’s like hey we’ve got you know people reporting to you that that is ah can be really difficult can be hard at times. What would you say has been some of the challenges over the years on the staff leadership side on kind of ensuring that people are aligned, pointed in the right direction, moving in the right direction? What would be some of those challenges that kind of come to mind when you think about leading from that seat? Matt Slocum — I think um, the challenge was when we were smaller as a staff, we were very relational so we were able to handle things without systems, and without kind of family rules. We had a church mission statement that we do live by, but in that in the gray areas people make different decisions than you were wanting or expecting, but it’s never been communicated. So over the years we’ve had difficult situations come up, and we handle it from a standpoint of, well, you did do this, or didn’t do that, and we didn’t want that. And the person’s like, well you never told me that. Rich Birch — Mmm. Matt Slocum — Um so I just kind of did what you I thought. And we’d kind of end it, and kind of move on a little bit, but really not settled. So over the years we developed – we realized really the issue was, for instance, maybe it wasn’t that you did something wrong, I felt dishonored, and that’s really the issue. So we developed over the last three four years some governing core values that we live by. We communicate them we we overcommunicate because you can’t overcommunicate anything, can you? Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yet right. Matt Slocum — People people just forget, I forget, and so you’re always communicating in many ways these staff values. And that’s how we start the conversations, rather than “you did this” or “you didn’t do this”… Rich Birch — Interesting. Matt Slocum — Um I can go into it and say, hey, I know you didn’t mean anything, but when this happened I felt this way, I felt a little dishonored and that… And we live by these rules, just that other person ideally would say, man I don’t want you to feel dishonored. I’m really sorry that did that. Well now all of a sudden you’re moving forward. Rich Birch — Right, right, right. Interesting. Matt Slocum — And moving past the issues you know and you’re seeking to honor one another. Rich Birch — I love that. Now can you maybe drill, you know, one layer deeper on kind of distinguishing the difference between hey, here’s a staff team who who just executed something poorly that wasn’t great, and where it it feels like oh actually you stepped over the line and and it actually steps into a place of dishonor. Can you give me an example of a situation like that, or or dream up an example? So if you’re if you’re trying to protect the innocent in this scenario. Matt Slocum — Right. Yeah, um, well you know they say you don’t need bylaws until you need bylaws, right? So how often do you read your bylaws? How often do you read your employee manual? Those are kind of guard rails um for the organization. So it’s very clear when you step over those lines. Um, but for the day-to-day um, you need something that’s more, now if you were originally we’re very corporate also, but you could manage that, but we decided we want to be relational and that is tricky and takes time. So um, maybe for instance—I’ve done this many times—I have gone around people not in the chain of command because it was simpler and easier and maybe the pastor who reports to me, I went you know, um under her to her direct report… Rich Birch — Yep. Right. Matt Slocum — …and just had her do… and she wasn’t aware, and then she finds out about it, she’s gonna feel very dishonored and things like that. And so it’s her she has the ability to come to me and say, hey I heard about this, is this true? I was a little thrown by that. My appropriate response, like you are totally right, I dishonored you in that. I’m sorry. Um, a lot of times it’s communication/chain of command type things. There’s no intent to dishonor or deceive anybody, but it’s, you know, you just you run at a fast pace and you you know you step out of like those lines, and that person is understanding, going I know your heart behind this. But we also had these staff values minted on a coin. Rich Birch — Oh that’s cool! Matt Slocum — They’re honoring. Ah, if you’ve heard of a challenge coin the military uses these for different deployments things like… Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yeah. Matt Slocum — We minted a challenge coin with our governing values on it. And we can sit down and say hey I need to have a coin conversation and everybody knows what that means. Rich Birch — Love that. Right. Matt Slocum — You just kind of let your guard down. And we just move forward for the purpose of unity and restoration. Rich Birch — Love that. Yeah yeah, no, that’s good. Matt Slocum — So hopefully that answers your question, but usually it’s not intentional things, but we do want to grow and we do want to be challenged. And so we know that’s where God God uses us this and the challenges. Rich Birch — Yeah, why don’t you take us inside one of those conversations, help us to understand. So I love the idea of a physical tool – I love – challenge coins are amazing. If you if you if you’re not familiar with those, those are a great tool and actually not that expensive to get done. They’re ah you know a great can be a great kind of internal piece for sure. But take us inside one of those conversations. What what have been, for you, some of the guiding principles that have led to real positive outcomes on the other side of conversations that that could be considered, hey this is this is like two or three layers deep – we’re pushing deeper here. We’re going beyond just that “this is what you did” to “hey, let’s address the underlying, kind of, culture issues”. Matt Slocum — Sure ah, protect the innocent. Um, there was a situation a number of years ago where a staff pastor um kind of broke ranks with a frustration. Rich Birch — Sure. Matt Slocum — And it got to the volunteers. Um his frustration with the pastoral team. Now these things are normal. Those are gonna happen and that’s why we have this conversation, but it kind of broke ranks and we felt like, man you hung us out a little bit and so. Plus you drew volunteers into a situation they really didn’t need to be a part of. It probably blew up their security in the leadership a little bit and it was kind of a minor issue, honestly. And so I was able to sit down and go, hey, boy, that really that didn’t feel right. Rich Birch — Hmmm, right. Matt Slocum — And just going, here’s how we felt about that; we felt dishonored. We felt like it was a lack of loyalty a little bit and really, you need to be able to come to us with those situations. So it’s just saying, hey I’m part of a team here.. Rich Birch — Right. Matt Slocum — But the great thing is it’s a tool. Instead of saying, hey you said this. Well I didn’t say that; I didn’t say it like that. Well, that’s what I heard. Well now you’re in the weeds already, right? And you’re not… it’s not gonna be fruitful, and one of the things we say, you’re ready to have a conversation with somebody if you’re ready to restore that relationship. Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. Matt Slocum — If you’re if you’re looking to win an argument, you’re probably not ready. So if you can emotionally get to a point of saying, I love this person, I want the best for them, I’m frustrated, but I really want to restore this. That’s a good foundation to start that coin conversation and you might need to take a couple days to have it. Rich Birch — Mmm, yes. Matt Slocum — But now you know that there’s room for the Holy Spirit to bring unity. There’s you know room for God to move and bring reconciliation. Rich Birch — I love that. Well and I love that, you know, positioning of your own heart, right? To say, hey am I am I coming at this from a I’m just trying to prove my point, as opposed to, no, like there’s a bigger thing at play here. I want to restore relationship; I want to you know I want us to move forward. What are your your four values – you kind of hinted at them? Um I think you’ve got four… Matt Slocum — Yeah, yes. Rich Birch — What are those values? Talk us through those and how have those impacted the church. Matt Slocum — Whoop, well I dropped the coin right there so… Rich Birch — Ah, that’s great. Matt Slocum — But they are faithful, teachable, honoring, and excellence. Um, it’s a it’s kind of ah a merging of what we had as core values/governing values as a church. When ah when we would do our membership class we say here’s our here’s our church values. When you step into it it’s an amazing environment, but it means you’ll be challenged. Well then as we had these staff difficult staff conversations we develop some staff values. And then we realized, well this is ridiculous, we have two sets of values. And so we boiled it down to these four. So a faithful um somewhat self-explanatory, but Jesus always expected a return on what was given. The faithful steward brought back more then was given and that was expected. Um and it wasn’t for that servant’s glory excuse me it was for the glory of the Master. And so to go, whatever you’re going to put into my hands, it’s going to increase; I’m going to leave it better than I left it. Um, you know with job descriptions there could be just really clear things that aren’t being addressed. And you can go back and to a governing value of faithfulness and going, you’re really not being faithful in this area, and we need to see growth there. So you can be very direct and specific about things, but it’s always going back to a governing value. Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. Now which of these—so faithful, teachable honoring and excellence—which of these four have been the the place where you’ve got traction? Where it’s like ooh we seem to be having the most conversations in this area? So it’s either like, you know, looking at it from the positive point of view, hey that’s been the most effective tool to kind of push the culture forward. If I was a pessimist I would say, oh this is the area where hey maybe we’ve struggled a bit, but which which of these four has been the one where we seem to be coming back to conversations in that area more, you know you know, more often? Matt Slocum — Well I’ll say the one that resonates with me personally the most—they all do because we live by ’em—is honor. Um I’m a type of person that can go introverted there. There was a season where um I didn’t really speak my mind. And what that does—I’m introverted—you don’t speak your mind and um, you know they say unresolved or unexpressed emotion lead to depression. And so I had ah had a bout of depression because I just wasn’t speaking my mind, because I didn’t want to dishonor anybody. Um, but then my mantra for this is honoring, but honest. And so that’s where we can we can really work through some things because we know this is a safe environment. And this has helped me over the even the last two years to just have my voice to another level with my senior pastor. We’re very close as friends and sometimes that can have its own challenges of am I an employee or a friend? And him and I we talk all about this and we just work very well together, but to go hey I’ve got to be honest, I don’t want to dishonor you – I hope this is a safe place. And those type of things couch a conversation and go yeah, go ahead I don’t want you to feel like that. There was times I in my early days of pastoring I was very… “zeal without knowledge” is not good as scripture says. Rich Birch — Ah sure. Yes. Matt Slocum — I just came in and spoke my mind and he’s like, that’s not how you start a conversation. So honor is one that resonates resonates with me a lot – honoring and honest because I think many times we have a difficult conversation and we’re trying to find a reason to to get around it, or say no to something, when the reality is it just doesn’t line up with what we want to do. So you’re you know for instance, someone wants to come into your house or they want to do something and you’re like I think think we’re busy. So there’s an external reason rather than the real reason and I think this really helps us boil down to the real reason because it really helps for future conversations too. Rich Birch — Mmm. Matt Slocum — And I think because of these type of things our staff is very strong; if something if there’s ah, an issue going on it’s gonna stand out real quick and we can address it. So yeah, so honor that would be that would be mine. Rich Birch — Um, love that. Yeah, love it – faithful, teachable, honoring, excellence. I love it. What else have you done with your team to ensure that this pushes beyond you but kind of down into the culture to ensure that, hey we’re pushing kind of crucial conversations. It’s one thing for us to have that… Matt Slocum — Right. Rich Birch — …but then it’s another thing for our team to say hey I want to do that with the people that they oversee, and they manage, and they serve. So how have you been able to see that kind of go to the next couple layers down? Matt Slocum — Well lot of it’s training. A lot of it’s getting good at conversations and you know pushing the baby bird out of the nest going, you can fly; you can do this. Um and not, you know, for me I’ll I’ll end up taking things on myself that I really don’t need to do and go, okay, you can have that conversation and just coaching coaching a staff member through going, here’s the real issues. You know a lot of times if there’s an offense, you really kind of got to minister to that person who’s going to have the conversations. And so there’s a lot of one on one coaching for those type of things. But also we developed these staff values that really the foundation of it was that a pastoral retreat and getting the buy-in of the staff, going what do you guys think are the real issues? I think we had a list of twelve different values um at one point and going. So now you have team buy in to this. We really need to engage the brains, the hearts, the spirits of our staff. Doesn’t mean we don’t make decisions as leaders, but we really want to hear what they’re thinking and then we can take that information, go back, and make a make a decision from there. But I think that was really beneficial whether it was our mission statement or vision statement the governing values Those were not done in a vacuum. Really we took key leaders and staff and brought them together and said what do you guys think are the key ones? And honestly some of those things made it in the final round that we weren’t thinking. Rich Birch — So how did you, I’d love to hear a little bit more about that. How did you narrow down? I think a lot of us have that like we’ve got ten different values. You know I’ve said in so many contexts, listen we’ve got to get these down to three or four… Matt Slocum — Correct; right. Rich Birch — …like I can’t remember more than three or four like it just, you know. Even if it’s stuff I’m passionate about. So what did that look like – can you kind of take us inside that conversation how you were able to kind of synthesize into these four? Matt Slocum — Right. And you know our senior, we’re senior pastor led so it’s really his heart screaming for something. So it started with him; you have to have—especially for something like this; this is not something you can delegate to an executive pastor—this is really the heart of the senior pastor. Um, it’s good when the senior pastor involves the team, which ours did. Pastor James did. And we as I said we had a retreat and we brainstormed. We said we’ve got, we don’t do conversations very well, sometimes, and what’s the real issue? Um and as leaders we have to grow ourselves personally. And so we just we had a whiteboard. We got a we went to a retreat center. We got a whiteboard and we we just started throwing things up on the on the board. What resonated? What didn’t? And sometimes there were as many cuts at it. Okay, let’s come back to this in a couple days. What’s resonating with you guys? And then trial and error – what works, you know? Um and it just boiled down to somewhat organically. It wasn’t a process cause we were learning it it as we went; we were building the airplane in the air a little bit, without trying to hit the ground. Um, so that was kind of our process. It was really organic. Rich Birch — Yep. Matt Slocum — It was honoring to be part of that and I think that was a big deal. And get the buy-in and the team if people want to be part of something that their voice is heard and you know, and we’re doing ministry – this is important and it’s life changing. So that was kind of our… and then over the years you evaluate and go and is this still is this still effective for ministry? So… Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm. Matt Slocum — And then about once a year we do a key leader meeting, which would be our staff ministry leaders (if they lead), if it’s a volunteer who leads, volunteers, and our top givers – the the financial leaders of the church – we get… it’s about 240 people we gather them together once a year, and we we gave them all the coin. We we explained it. So now these volunteers are taking it into their ministries and pushing it out into the church. And we have the coin in our in our pocket too. And ah the military has ah a funny thing with the coins. If if no I haven’t done this but at ah they go to a bar and whoever puts the coin out first if if one guy is missing their coin, they’re the one who buys. Rich Birch — Yes. Matt Slocum — So we have a coffee shop at our in our church and so we’ll all pull our coins out and um, you know whoever didn’t have their coin, they’re buying, you know, so we have the coins in our pockets. We’re just living this thing because, you know, I came from a corporate world where mission statements and values were on the walls of the conference room, but nobody knew what they were; nobody lived by them. Rich Birch — So true. Yep. Matt Slocum — But we have a mission statement that we’ve lived by for 20 years. I mean we we died and bled to create this thing and we live by it and that’s our filter. So governing values are a similar other thing we just make it a culture. You’re gonna see it everywhere. Um, and we’re gonna live it. So yeah. Rich Birch — Oh. Yeah I love it. I love that. I love the practicality of it. I love the the clarity of gathering people together. Um you know and and having you know a bit of a process in the fact that you went away and you’re you know whenever there’s whiteboards and a retreat center involved, there’s good things happen usually um, but you know and then but then pushing to like no, we’re we’re not just going to like you say leave it on the wall. Matt Slocum — Right. Rich Birch — So many churches do that. They we come up with these things, we leave it on the wall, but we don’t actually live it out. I think that’s so fantastic. That’s that’s great. Good stuff. Matt Slocum — And then anybody new into the church, you know our new members class. We call it connect to the vision – vision of the church. They’re going to hear about these things so they not only know the vision, the values, but we’re we’re challenging them to step in and when they step in we’re saying now you will be challenged. Um and you’re gonna assume the best of people. But if you want that, we guarantee that in a year you’re gonna look back and you’ve grown in Christ, and that’s really what we’re doing. Rich Birch — Um, love it. So good. Great. Well This has been a fantastic conversation. I know so many of us we you know we struggle with ah how do we have the kind of crucial conversation? How do we, you know, have the conversation that can be difficult? Is there anything else, you’d like to share on that front to kind of help us – a a tip or an approach that has helped as you’ve been engaging with your people on, you know, these kind of difficult conversations? Matt Slocum — Yeah, unless I would say unless it’s an urgency where you like, oh I’ve got a 24 hour deadline to have this conversation because of you know, maybe legal reasons, things like that. Ah be intentional. Maybe take ah a couple extra days to calm down. Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm. Matt Slocum — Because because honestly we can get really upset about something and the person meant nothing, but we still have to talk about it. Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Matt Slocum — Um, take a lot of time, maybe get counsel on how to proceed. There’s we have an we have an apostolic elder board that’s outside of our church of of pastors. And many times their senior pastor will go to them and ask them their thoughts on the situation. Um, and to be wise, but you know you don’t leave that hanging out there. They say if if after two years you have the same problem, you’re the problem. And so you don’t want to leave that hanging out there forever, but you know maybe take a little bit of time and just proceed with caution because you do want to restore and challenge at the same time. Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. This has been a fantastic conversation, Matt. I appreciate you giving your time today. Where do we want to send people if they want to track with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online to to connect with the church going forward? Matt Slocum — Yeah, ah victorylife.church is our website and then also the links to there are to all the social media platforms. You can find us Facebook, YouTube, Instagram – all that all that good stuff. Yeah. Rich Birch — All that stuff. That’s great. Thanks! Thanks so much, Matt. I appreciate you being here today. Thanks for helping us through this podcast today. Matt Slocum — Thanks, Rich – I really appreciate it.

Thanks for joining us for this episode of the unSeminary podcast. I’m talking with Warren Bird, the Senior Vice President of Research and Equipping at the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. It’s time for a fresh look to see what God is doing, especially coming out of the pandemic. If you’re wondering how church planting and launching multisite campuses have changed, you won’t want to miss this conversation. Listen in as Warren offers a sneak peek at initial findings of his currently open survey, New Faces of Church Planting, plus invites you to participate. A new era. // Warren believes that church planting and launching multisite campuses has shifted in a number of ways over the last several years. Not only from the suburbs to a more multiethnic, urban context, but also from being the work of a solo church planter to being more of a team effort. It’s changed from being standalone enterprise to being very network supported. It’s significant to pay attention to these shifts because as goes church planting and multisite launching, so goes the rest of the church. ECFA’s current survey, New Faces of Church Planting, is examining current multiplication trends which Warren believes will ultimately shape the whole North American Church.Initial findings. // The survey just opened in late February 2022 and some of the very early findings indicate shifts in church multiplication. There are seven things Warren is starting to see that seem to have changed in church planting over the last 10-20 years. The first is that a huge number of survey respondents identify themselves as missional, but even more significant is that the second most common way churches are identifying themselves is as being multiracial or multiethnic. Our communities continue to become more diverse and churches are moving toward being less homogeneous and embracing Revelation 5:9 where the kingdom of heaven is going to include every tongue, tribe, nation, and culture together.Rent or own? // About one third of people who have responded to the survey so far own their facility. Coming out of the pandemic, Warren anticipates this number may shift even further. Many rented spaces closed during the pandemic or stopped allowing churches to use their locations, and churches realized how difficult it is if you don’t have control of your location.Creating healthy disciples. // The number one thing churches are doing to create healthy disciples is helping their people with personal spiritual disciplines. A significant second response is service to the community outside the walls of the church. Third was helping people produce fruit in their lives, such as embracing justice, or forgiveness, or love, peace and joy, which would not have been as widespread ten or more years ago.Primary ethnicity. // While the primary ethnicity of church planters was predictably Caucasian, the second most selected option so far is multiethnic or multiracial. The more this becomes the norm with new churches and new campuses, the more the broader church will shift.Residency and internship vs assessment. // More than one-third of church planters or campus pastors did a residency or internship, and over half said that they had undergone assessment. A residency or an internship is a big commitment, but about 87% of multisite directors—those who are responsible for their church’s multisite campuses—said they preferred that their campus pastors have done a residency or internship.Top things done online. // Coming out of the pandemic there has been a huge shift as to what churches do online. Whereas ten years ago it would have focused solely on broadcasting services, now the top things that churches do online also include small groups, staff meetings, prayer teams, counseling, children’s ministry, plus more.Church multiplication. // More than one-third of the church leaders responding have been involved in planting one or more new churches. And more than two-thirds of the multisite churches have added another campus during the last three years. That seems to indicate that not only were there a lot of launches leading up to the pandemic, but also during the pandemic.Participate in the survey. // At the time of this podcast airing, the survey will be open for a couple more weeks so you still have a chance to share your experience with church multiplication. The survey takes about 15 minutes. By participating, not only do you get a free copy of the final findings, you get invited to a webinar with Warren where he’ll answer questions about the survey results. Secondly, you’ll be entered in a drawing to win one of several Amazon gift cards. Plus, if you are in the US, you’ll receive the spiritual demographics for the zip code that you select which will help you identify needs that you can meet in that area in Jesus’ name. Finally, you’ll receive ECFA’s top five tools for church planting, such as how to start a new church or how to determine cash flow level – all for FREE as a thank you for participating. Go to unseminarysurvey.com today to participate in the survey New Faces of Church Planting. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live! Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Well hey everybody, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in today. You know every week we bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you. This week we have got a friend – a personal friend – I love this guy. You’re going to love hearing today from Warren Bird. Warren, if you do not know him – Dr. Warren Bird – is from ah, he’s the Senior Vice President of Research and Equipping at the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. Um, or that he’s a friend. He’s one of those people, and there’s not very many of them, who I say anytime you want to come on the podcast, Warren, you just let me know. And he reached out and said, I want to come on – I got something big coming up that I’m excited for you to plug in. Warren is a gift to the church. He’s a real friend. Warren, welcome. So glad you’re here. Warren Bird — Hey thank you, Rich, and the feeling is mutual. I listen to unSeminary regularly. I encourage others to do it and I always ah learn something, so I look forward to today. Rich Birch — Nice. Yeah, so so excited for this. For folks that don’t know, why don’t you kind of tell us a little bit about your role – you… I have I just have so much respect for you. I oftentime I’ve I know I’ve said this before when you’ve been on the pat on the program in the past I’m like, I play an expert on the internet; you are actually and a church expert. And so, so many times I’m just echoing what your research you’ve done or work that you’ve done so I just just, you know, we’re just so indebted to you. But why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background. Tell us about your work with ECFA. Kind of give us a ah who is Warren Bird/why should we listen kind of introduction? Warren Bird — Well, the nickel tour is I love Jesus and I’m a frustrated evangelist and I wish I could win the world to Christ, but I can’t. God didn’t give me those gifts, but he did give me gifts to come alongside people like you and many others, especially pastors, and say, look if I put tools in your hand that help you make wiser decisions, bolder decisions, ah have more confidence, and and go for it, and so that’s led to me being, after pastoring for a number of years, the research director at Leadership Network, and now at the (you said it so well, Rich) ECFA -the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. And for Canadian counterparts, there’s a CCC organization in Canada, but where where I get to, if you will find best practices and put them in people’s hands. And it so turns out that this whole idea of church multiplication we have like hundreds of ECFA members that are into church planting or multisiting. And so we said, well let’s do some kind of survey, clear the ground, show what the state of church planting, of multisite compared to church planting are today, and let’s see what we can learn and then put back in the hands of people so that they can lead the charge all the better. Rich Birch — Yeah I love this. So friends, I want you to listen in. We’re going to ask you to take an action today but I want you to listen in. Um, for this whole entire conversation. You’re going to get some nuggets here that you’re not getting anywhere else. It’s going to be a great conversation. There’s… ah so one of the things, if you don’t know about Warren, over the years he’s done a number of these studies that are literally foundational to us understanding what’s happening in the broader church. They are incredibly thorough. This isn’t just like when I do a survey I send it out to a couple thousand people – you work on you know, just real research basis that’s you know, founded in like I say actual practices. Warren Bird — Yeah, but this this would be the largest cross-denominational survey of church multiplication… Rich Birch — Wow. Love it. Yes. Warren Bird — …that anyone has done and when we launched just last week. Ah, we had fifty denominations and networks – Canada and the United States… Rich Birch — Yeah. Warren Bird — …all pulsing their people so that we really get a representative picture of what God is doing. And the last such national survey was one Ed Stetzer and I did that became the book Viral Churches, subtitle: Helping Church Planters Become Movement Makers. And so much has changed in the, by the time this comes out, 14 years since the research there. Rich Birch — Love it. Warren Bird — And it’s time for a fresh look and to see what God is doing, especially coming out of the pandemic ah has church planting has multisiting changed, and if so how? But you know how’s it how’s the funding? We just go a whole bunch of different directions, and the good news is we ask everybody just for 15 minutes. So, Rich, if you took the survey you wouldn’t get the same questions as Maria down the street as José you know across the the province or state. Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm. Warren Bird — Um, everybody gets a slightly different set of questions. But if you’ll give us 15 minutes – okay maybe it’ll take you twenty – um, we will then give you a report back so you can see the state of what’s happening. We’ll give you we got Amazon Gift Card incentives. we’ve we’ve got all, we’ll come back to the incentives, but but we’re your time is gonna pay. Rich Birch — It’s amazing. Yeah, absolutely So. You’ve already got to this but I want to let’s dig in a bit more… Warren Bird — Okay, yeah, and ah, we’ll spill the beans. Go ahead. Rich Birch — …on the on why this study. So why do? Yeah, yeah. So let’s dig on on so it’s called New Faces of Church Planting. Why this study, kind of, what were some of your assumptions as you were putting it together? Why did you say, Okay now is the time for us to do this? Ah you kind of dug into that, but give us a little bit more on that. Warren Bird — Okay, New Faces of Church Planting. I am convinced that church planting has shifted not only more from the suburbs to a more multi-ethnic urban context, but I’m convinced it’s moved from being the solo church planter to much more of the team effort in terms of launching. And that it’s it’s changed from being a standalone enterprise to being a very networked supported. I planted, Rich, years ago – the first church I planted I remember going to the bank and to to open up a bank account and they laughed at me. They said, you know, what kind of account do you want? I go, I don’t know. And and and and now today. There was no manual, there was no anything to help people, there was no Exponential Church Planting Conference, there was no unSeminary podcast. Rich Birch —Mmm-hmm. Warren Bird — And today people are much more networked. So um, the funding patterns, everything. We want to… I’m suspecting there is a new era and and here’s what I’m convinced: that as goes church planting, and multisiting for that matter, so goes the rest of the church in the years that follow. Rich Birch — So true. Warren Bird — In other words, the patterns, the experiments, the the things explored, the breakthroughs that these kind of pioneers – whether it’s the the local church plant or the the connected with your campus multisite – um as they find breakthroughs, others pay attention, are influenced by it, and they will follow as well. So this is going to shape the whole North American Church. Rich Birch — Love it. So we usually a typical weekend the an unSeminary podcast, we have five-, six-, seven thousand (it’s in that range) listening. Um, who are you hoping will take this study? When you’re you’re looking for kind of a bullseye, who’s the person that’s listening in that you’re thinking, I really want them to to to jump on and take this survey? Warren Bird — Actually I’m trying to have—let me let me say it two ways—one I’m avoiding the bullseye in that we use this thing called skip logic. So it’s like, well church plant. So when you start the survey you get like this initial fork – are you more church planting, or multisite? Well if you’re multisite, I want to know are you the multisite director, meaning like the executive pastor – someone who’s who oversees? Well I got a separate set of questions for you. Or are you the campus or location pastor? And if so I’ve got a specific set of questions for you. Or were you multisite and you’re not anymore? Rich Birch — Okay, cool. Warren Bird — I got a specific set of questions for you. So so there’s a whole kind of like multisite tree. Rich Birch — Yep. Warren Bird — Let’s say the trees’s got a big fork and the first fork is multisite with each with different branches and forks going along, or church planting? Okay so so are you in church planning? Were you in church planting? Were you maybe part of a church planter and you finish? If so, is the church still open? If so, I got a question for you. Or did the church close? Well I want to know why, from your perspective, as you look back, you know, help us understand what happened and and what can be learned from that. All right? Rich Birch — Mmm, right. Warren Bird — Are you, you know, actively church planting? Are you are you the founding pastor? Because sometimes you have a turnover of pastors in a church plant. Let’s say in year two or three or four – so so we want to parse that out. So so it’s all about the bullseye is multiplication. Rich Birch — Yes, yes, so basically anybody that’s been involved in anything but… Warren Bird — And I’m no matter who you are I’ve got a path for you. Rich Birch — Yes, okay, so basically if you’re listening in today and you’ve been involved in multiplication, really at any level, you’ve kind of had any engagement around the issues of multiplication, church planting, multisite – whether you’ve been on staff or you’re the lead pastor, the founding pastor, you’re you know you’re a campus pastor – all of those well all of those people – we’re looking for you to take the survey. Is that is that is that…ah, a way to say it? Warren Bird — Yep, and for all of you you get your own special branch, and you get, you know, it’ll be… I’m aiming at 15 minutes in terms of the question count. And you get to see the findings, you know? Rich Birch — Yeah, this is great. Warren Bird — Well, it’s it’s gonna be great. It’s it’s gonna really create metrics, um benchmarks, ratios, patterns—both pre and post pandemic—where we’re gonna have really a picture of where the church is now, and where it’s headed. And enter and… go ahead. Rich Birch — Okay, so I’m gonna I was gonna say I’m gonna ask you an inappropriate question. Hopefully our relationship can sustain this, Warren. It’s been about a week since the survey’s been open. Man, I and I know this is like the worst thing to ask someone who’s who’s midstudy. Are there any kind of early, interesting findings? Early things that you’re seeing that you could let our audience in on? Kind of peek up under the hood a little bit? Again, you could turn me down. Warren Bird — Absolutely. Done. Gotta do for you, Rich. Rich Birch — Oh you love it! Let’s hear them. Ah great. Warren Bird — Um because we h ave 1427 ah participants as of minutes before this call… Rich Birch — That’s great. Love it. Warren Bird — …So I prepped by looking over the initial frequencies, and and so first, you know, a lot of things I can I can tell you that that won’t surprise you… Rich Birch — Yes. Warren Bird — You know like okay we say well well, what about your facility? We asked this both for church planters and for multisites. Um, you know, do you lease it 24/7? Do you lease it with limitations? Ah. Do you own it? Whatever… Um lease with limitations is the is leader. Rich Birch — Right. Warren Bird — How old are you? The average person… I better not say that. Well I’ll say that. 42 years old. It is either the campus pastor, or the church planter which… Rich Birch — 42; interesting. Warren Bird — Which to me is very exciting because that’s much younger than the average pastor in North America. Here’s another trivia, and then I’m gonna get to so something that I think here that’s some changes that I’m seeing. Rich Birch — Right, some interesting shifts. Warren Bird — We asked um when did you or will you become self-sustaining, and of those who who are at least three years in it. Um, by year… end of year three, 43% were self-sustaining financially… Rich Birch — Wow. Warren Bird — …which is which is I I don’t think we knew that before and… Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s interesting. Yeah yeah. Warren Bird — …that’s very encouraging. Now again, of those who aren’t, I got a path down there. Rich Birch — Right. Warren Bird — You know to say okay so how are you funded? And I got all kinds of funding questions and and it’s fascinating—I’ll just go that way for a second. Um top 3 leaders in terms of funding are ah—for church planters at least because multisite pastors tend to be on staff—but for church planters, their own contribution by earning or their spouse’s earning, their denomination, and or um churches that have sponsored them. Um, so so there’s skin in the game, but there’s others helping, ah which is exciting. So let me let me shift; let me really spill the beans and give you—I think I as I looked over the data I jotted down—here are 7 things that I think have changed about church planting and I’ll draw multisite parallels. Rich Birch — Mmm. Warren Bird — Ah, where appropriate. Over the last… definitely over the last twenty years, probably over the last ten years, and I’ll do him as a countdown. Number seven, we gave like 20 terms, you know, describe your either multisite campus or church plant and we gave them all kinds of words like, like including buzzwords like, are you hybrid? Well that’s barely used. Are you phigital? You know the mix of physical and digital. I I think ah five, eight percent so far have said we’re phigital. Rich Birch — Ah, it’s that high? That’s crazy! I I don’t know anybody – I know we’ve been using that term, but I’m like I it seems like such an awkward term. Warren Bird — Yeah I okay I’m I’m not prejudicing; I’m just telling you what people… Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Warren Bird — Are you are you ah virtual, or or meta church? And I got 4% saying yes on that. But the the win, the the top of the heap, are are you missional? That’s the word that people more—now this isn’t theology, I got another question about that— Rich Birch — Yep. Yep; pe. Warren Bird — …and missional is to degree theological, as all of them are in a certain way. But here’s here was the big surprise for for my number 7 countdown, the second most cited was multiracial or multiethnic. Rich Birch — Love that. Warren Bird — And you would not have had that years ago there’s an… Rich Birch —No no. In fact I remember when I was in school, and I’ve said this before on other podcasts, I remember when I was on when I was in school the only—it’s ironic I talk a lot about church growth—I only remember like one ah like lecture on church growth stuff. So it wasn’t even a whole class. It was like one lecture and it was and literally it was about the homogeneous unit ah principle of church planting which is literally the opposite of multi-ethnic. It was like, what you need to do is be like—today I don’t even think you could get up and say that—you could what you need to do is everyone should be the same, like figure out how you get like the most narrowly defined cultural background um, and you know plant from that. And that’s in in my ministry career of two and a half decades that has completely turned upside down where that’s – I love that that’s exciting. Warren Bird — Yes, but but I think homogeneous today is multi-ethnic society… Rich Birch — Yes, right. That’s what people that’s what people are used to. That’s true. Good point. Warren Bird — And and that’s what we expect the church to be. Rich Birch — Yep yeah, that’s a good point. That’s a good point. Yep yes. Warren Bird — And and so that becomes the comfort zone, which you know Revelation 5:9 the kingdom of heaven is going to be every tongue, every tribe, every nation, every culture together. So we’re we’re more into looking like heaven and we’ve been helped by society moving that direction. Rich Birch — Yeah I Love that. Warren Bird — Al right now number 6 is is small but I think it’s it’s happy. Do you own your facility? Do you rent it? What do you do? One third own it um, which which… Rich Birch — Oh yeah, interesting. Warren Bird — …In this era of well we’re all renting school buildings, and all ‘hell not in the pandemic anymore’. So I’m gonna dig deeper on that. But just to say that’s an area we explore and I think there’s gonna be some changes in that coming out of the pandemic. Rich Birch — Yeah, you know that’s interesting because that is just anecdotally with the churches I’m talking to even on the multisite front, that is for sure one of those things that’s shifted in the last two years where we, you know, we there’s a lot more churches looking at owning or you know more 24/7 type things. I think one of the things that the—and I listen, I’m a big I’m a big proponent of portable but—one of the the things that really the pandemic pointed out to us was if you don’t have control of your location, it can be very very difficult, right? It can, you know, that creates extra potential grind, and the and at the same time, there’s interesting kind of confluence there with the churches I’m talking to. Anyways, there’s like the, can we can we actually do what we’re called to do, and we’re more interested in community service stuff and so we need space to do that. We need square footage to like run things that are that are you know helping in the community. So anyways, so that’s that’s cool number 6 I think. Warren Bird — Well you you have read directly into number 4 in my countdown of changes over the last decade plus, especially in church planting. I asked, what are you doing to create healthy disciples? And other words yes, technically we all as soon as we follow Jesus we’re discipled so I guess we’re really looking at disciple-making, but what are you doing? Number one emphasis was the personal spiritual disciplines, you know, are we helping you in your walk with in your relationship with God, and your prayer life, and your reading scripture each day, and the like. Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm. Warren Bird — Number two, Rich, was service. Rich Birch — Interesting, interesting. Warren Bird — Service to the community, and beyond the walls of the church. Rich Birch — That’s fascinating. Warren Bird — I don’t think we would have seen that um and and again I gave about eight or nine options there. Um and that service was number two. Number three—definitely wouldn’t have been—was lifestyle of—and I gave 3 pairs—love, peace, joy, justice, forgiveness, and I forget the the last quality, but are you helping produce that kind of the kind of people who that’s the fruit of their life that they are living out, in this case justice? Whoa that would not have been wide as widespread ten or more years ago. Rich Birch — No. So interestingly so I I launched a released a book four years ago, five years ago—Church Growth Flywheel—and we talk about five different things that—and this was based purely on my observation from at that point 300 interviews with leaders from the fastest growing churches in the country—and those churches that consistently, fast-growing churches, we’re seeing them do community service things. Like we’re seeing them do outreaches. We’re gonna mobilize our people – get out of the seats, into the streets – go do things. But interestingly over the years that chapter on community service is the one chapter that has done two things. One, it’s it’s got the most pushback – people are like, really is that really that important? And it’s the churches that actually said, you know, what we added that to our game and it made the biggest difference in what we were doing. We’re we’re doing, whether it’s Night to Shine, or we’re doing, you know, these kind of community engagement service opportunities. So that’s that for sure in my own little world, I’ve seen a shift in that where you know that it’s at the time it seemed like a. You know like a radical idea, but I love that it’s we’re seeing more and more churches actually do that actually say, hey how do we engage and and serve the community? That’s so good. Warren Bird — And Rich, you didn’t ask me to say this but I read that book cover to cover and it’s like sitting down with Rich Birch for a couple of hours and getting his best takes on on problem solving and areas to explore in your church, so that that book’s gonna have a long tail for it. Rich Birch — Yeah. Warren Bird — You know the bottom of the heap was, in the what are you doing to create healthy disciples? Teaching people to put God first in their finances. Rich Birch — Interesting. Yeah, yeah. Warren Bird — You know and yet you know the whole world is still struggling with living paycheck to paycheck and and being in financial debt and looking for that freedom that that I believe God’s principles can help people experience. Besides… Rich Birch — That’s an opportunity. Warren Bird — Yeah opportunity. All right that… Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely like over the years I’ve seen that with in the churches I’ve led when we’ve done Dave Ramsey or when we’ve done um, you know Joe Sangl stuff, like it’s amazing how those, you know, it’s it’s humbling frankly as we help people get their finances straight. It’s like other um, you know the other parts of their their kind of relationships and their you know their relationship with Christ – other things seem to come in line, which I guess makes sense. Money’s such a big a part of their relationship. But what else you – I cut you off there. Warren Bird — No, no, no okay so we started with number 7 was the terms people use number 6 was you know your facility. Do you own it? Number 5 was what are you doing to create healthy disciples? Number 4 primary ethnicity. This is going to reinforce the multisite – number 1 predictably was Caucasian, number 2 was not hispanic, asian, or other ethnicities, but it was multiethnicity or multiracial. So again, this is becoming the norm and and I’m convinced as churches go, new churches new campuses, so goes the rest. Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely; love it. Warren Bird — Number 3 is – I ask it two ways. One is I ask the individual taking the survey, if you are the church planter or campus pastor, did you do a residency or internship… Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah. Warren Bird — …in the last…I think it was the last five years before launching whatever you you help launch? And more than one third said yes. Rich Birch — Really? Warren Bird — And I’ll speak where you assessed and that was well over half. But you know assessment is like a weekend or a week long thing a residency or an internship is a big commitment… Rich Birch — Absolutely, yeah. Warren Bird — …and though that’s a game-changer. But let me before you comment. Let me tell you the the biggest game-changer. We ask multisite directors, in other words, those responsible for their churches’ multisite campuses: Do you prefer that your campus pastor be assessed? And so far… I’m sorry, do you prefer that your campus pastor have done a residency or internship? So far, you want to guess what what they’re saying? It’s high I’ll give you that. Rich Birch — Yeah I was going to say, it’s high, like you know that that’s from your previous studies. You know I’ve said I think it was like 91% of all campus pastors are from within the congregation. So it’s a very super high so I would imagine this would be similar number. 80/90% I would say it’s quite high. Warren Bird — Yeah, you got it. It’s 87% so far that did. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah. Warren Bird — So to me this is this is just this whole idea that’s bubbling all over of doing a ministry residency before actually planting/launching your campus. I just see that as more and more happening and moving that direction. Rich Birch — Yeah that’s great. Well and on that particular one the interesting takeaway for multi-site churches on that particular piece is, I think so many times when we’re trying to hire people we look externally; we’re thinking like I got to go find people. And you know the the advice I, you know, and it’s because of your past work, I quote it all the time I’m like, stop thinking about that – the first if you’re going to have 10 campuses, the first nine of them are going to come within your church. The problem is you got to go find those 9 people now and start developing them. How do we, you know, we don’t let’s not wait until we need a campus pastor. We’ve got to start you know, who are the top 9 people that we think we might might potentially – 5 years from now – be a campus pastor. Let’s work on how do we develop those people now, and develop them from within – raise them up in the system. So yeah, that’s interesting that continues to resonate – that doesn’t surprise me at all. Warren Bird — I remember the first survey I did on multisite when it was just, you know, words were just starting. And by the way in this survey, we ask, what do you call your person? And campus pastor is still overwhelmingly the top choice. Location pastor is 11%… ah, site I’m sorry – location pastor is 15%, site pastor is 11%, and other is 6%, so I’m going to use the phrase campus pastor, but if you need to translate, okay. Rich Birch — Sure. Warren Bird — But what way back to early on the very first survey I did of multisite when was first starting I asked, the following question was in there. And when people asked me about the survey, I said here’s the question that surprised me the most. We asked when you launched a new campus, did lay involvement go down, stay the same, or go up? And Rich, I think that’s the stat you were referring to that lay involvement. It was like 87% or 91% – it was something like that. I was such a surprise to me that the next time a couple years later when we did, through Leadership Network, another multi-site survey, I asked the same question again and got the same ridiculously, delightfully high number. And so all that’s great. You’re mobilizing your lay people. Go ahead. Rich Birch — Um, yeah, absolutely well. And yeah I absolutely yeah multisite again ah the way I’ve said it internally is multisite from my own personal experience and taught… I’m working with so many churches, it is like the best way that I’ve seen to mobilize people, to get more people plugged into the mission, and obviously church planting does that as well. Ah, because there’s like this interesting, we gotta find people, we gotta get them plugged in, we you know we yeah, we have to get them. We can’t just have people sitting. We’ve got to get them. My son interestingly he’s in in college now and he started going to a church that’s couple years old—they launched right actually they launched fall 2019 right before the pandemic so they’re still very much in the in the church plant mode, and he’s like—the lead guy’s names Yesper—he’s like, Yesper, he’s like really good at getting people to volunteer. And I’m like yeah because he has to, like you you have to get people mobilized like if he doesn’t get it, there it’s not gonna happen. So love that I think you got a couple more. Don’t give us the number one yet I want to do something before we get to the number one yet. But yeah I think you’ve got a couple more before we get to that. Warren Bird — Okay, and and let me just do it aside. Your leaders are so good when the campus is new at raising up lay peopleople and then when you start needing staff, that’s the big fork in the road if you hire staff to be doers instead of minister-makers, instead of leader-makers, instead of pastor-makers, then you move all this great lay power, you diminish it and you you change it into only the paid. Rich Birch — That’s the temptation right there that is the temptation that so many of us fall into. Warren Bird — Absolutely. Okay number 2 may seem obvious. But ten years ago if I had asked what are you doing online? At most you would have gotten, we broadcast our services. Um and let me just give you kind of I’m going to rank them in the order. We gave like 25 choices you know you, do you communion online, do you counseling online… Here here were the top ones: number one was corporate worship. Number 2 with small groups, which is I mean my wife and I are leading a couple’s ah small group, and it happens tonight and we’re going to meet 3 times in person. I live we’re we’re based in New York where things aren’t quite as as healing as in other parts of the continent and but but each week it’s on Zoom. And it’s working great – I mean we never would have imagined that. So small groups, then third staff meeting, fourth prayer teams, fifth counseling, sixth children, and on it goes. Rich Birch — That’s amazing. Warren Bird — And all these things that, you know, we just wouldn’t have imagined that we could do. Rich Birch — No, it’s so true. Even personally like we, you know, we’ve been you you know, we have obviously journeyed together a little bit with Liquid and, you know, we started doing church online in 2009, and you know have a long journey there but in my own personal life, it really took the pandemic to convince me. Oh I can do stuff online like even coaching and like you know meeting with other leaders and and all of that. Even though you know I’ve we’ve invested a lot done a lot to get but there’s that’s something there. Rich Birch — Before we get to number one, I want to encourage people to go to unseminarysurvey.com um, we’ll have the link in the show notes but we just want to make it super easy. You’re listening to the unseminary podcast, just go to unseminarysurvey.com. It only takes 15 minutes um and I know you’ve got some kind of benefits for people. You’ve got like if you I know you’ve got like draws for Amazon gift cards, and stuff like that. Tell us… through and you get access to the survey… tell us about a few of those things before we get to the number one thing you want to share. Warren Bird — Let me tell you three of them – one is you get a copy of the findings… Rich Birch — Okay, which is killer. Warren Bird — …and you get invited to a webinar where I’m going to answer the questions a week later, so if you got specific questions, I I can’t wait to answer them because usually I learned so much as someone says, but did you compare this to that, or the people who said yes to this you know do they tend to be over there? I’m like what a good question and I go look it up and then I can say something helpful on the webinar. So so one, you get to learn… Rich Birch — Love it. Warren Bird — Um and and I can’t wait to share it with you, and ECFA does things with excellence I’ll be illustrated and easy to understand and so forth. Number two, yes, we do have those Amazon gift card drawings. I think we’ve got eight at $50 each and and we really do you know we use a randomizer to pick names when and I’ve done this in previous… Rich Birch — Nice. Shocker. Warren Bird — Well well I say that because when we write people and say you’ve won – this is not a joke you… Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Yes, people are like is this what I has yeah that’s amazing. Yes, yes, that’s funny. Warren Bird — What um, yes, it it spam? And it usually takes my assistant a couple of times to say, no, you really – we want to give you a Amazon gift card your name was randomly selected. Rich Birch — That’s funny. Love that. Warren Bird — For those in the US, we want to give you spiritual demographics of your zip code or you know the area that you select. Rich Birch — Love it. Warren Bird — We want to help you see you know how many how many single adults are there in your community, what is the racial makeup of your community, what are the what are the needs in terms of ah, parents at home – single parents and so forth. Rich Birch — Love it. Warren Bird — Um, that it’s going to help you identify needs that you can meet in Jesus name and it’s a tool that you can use with your team and all that. Rich Birch — That’s great. Warren Bird — So and I think there are 2 or 3 other incentives listed, but we want to make this worthwhile for you. Um, and… Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. I…yes? Warren Bird — …oh oh I’m sorry I’m sorry I would more we have the top 5 tools for church planting from ECFA like… Rich Birch — Oh, right. Um, right. Yet. Wow. Warren Bird — …like over the years we’ve come up with a bunch of resources and we picked the 5 most so like how to start a new church, or how to do the housing allowance for the for the minister, or campus pastor or… Rich Birch — Mmm, right. Yep. Wow. Warren Bird — …Or how to you know, set up a budget, or a you know, determine cash flow level. So so this is this is really stuff that’s going to help you and FREE for taking the survey. It’s. Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, that’s great. Again friends, just drop by unseminarysurvey.com that’ll just just redirect you, take you right to the survey. I’d encourage you to do this; I would say it’s worth doing it. It’s only 15 minutes – it’s worth doing it just to get the the the one thing, which is just to get the results, is killer. You’re going to literally you’re going to be given incredible insights that’ll help you as you look to the future in whatever kind of way you’re involved in multiplication. But then all this other stuff is like just incredible gravy on top. It’s definitely worth your time. It’s worth your team, it’s worth encouraging your team as well, like if you’ve got people on your team, like if you’re the executive pastor, get your lead pastor to do it as well so that you know you might get a slightly different nuanced views on it which would be fantastic. Warren Bird — Well, the executive pastor goes down a different path than the campus pastor. Rich Birch — Yeah, which is wonderful. So want to do that. Now you said there were 7 – you’ve given us 6 of them -this is amazing. What’s number 1? Warren Bird — Okay, has your church—and then I’ll bring in a multisite parallel, but if I’ll first do at the church level—has your church—and we give them involvement in other church planting and the top of the heap that we asked was—have you been directly involved in launching one or more churches? We also say have you been indirectly—like you know we give money to a fund, or we encourage, or we prayed for this, but—have you been directly involved with planting one or more new churches? More than one third said yes! Rich Birch — Wow, that’s amazing. Warren Bird — So far it’s 39% – almost four out of ten. That is a game changer if that ends up being true and what’s happened, and let me give you the multisite parallel. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that’s amazing. Warren Bird — Have you added another campus; has your church—that you’re a multisite campus—have added a new campus in the same same time period – in the last three years? Okay last one for church planting was 39%; this is two thirds – this is 65% have said yes. Rich Birch — Wow, That’s amazing. Warren Bird — So I can’t wait to dig and you know, kind of like because we ask when did you launch. And so I can do post pandemic or pre-pandemic. Rich Birch — Yes, yep. Warren Bird — But I’m thinking this is saying that there have been lots of launches both leading up to the pandemic but but during the pandemic. Whoa! Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that’s amazing. Well and it also speaks frankly on the demographic side. It speaks to you’re getting the right people to take the survey, right? These are people that are actually engaged in this activity… Warren Bird — You know that’s you’re right. You’re right. Rich Birch — …which which is which is good, right? Warren Bird — And and I paid an academic to to tear apart my survey and that’s one of the things he said you know you’re going to get the choir in there and they’re going to give you the rosiest point of view because they’re you know they’re all in and they’re doing what they believe in. Um, so you’re gonna have little bias. Rich Birch — Yeah, but which is what you want though you want we want to know what those people are up to and so that showing you like hey there’s there’s good. You know you? you’ve hit the right market. That’s that’s great. Warren Bird — Yeah, yeah. Rich Birch — Well, Warren, this is incredible. Again, it’s unseminarysurvey.com. We’ll link it in the show notes; you’ll get an email about it, so we’ll pester you about it. As you know if you hang out with unSeminary, we’ve known to pester you from time to time. I really do want you to take this. Um Warren, anything else just says we kind of wrap up this episode anything else you’d like to share, or anything else we want to make sure we send people to? I’m sure this is like the big thing these days, but anything else you want to say as we wrap up? Warren Bird — Now just thank you. Thank you for your investment of a few minutes is going to help thousands, if not tens of thousands of other people – just thank you. They’re hard questions. They’re not easy questions like I’m going to ask, you you know, your attendance different years, or finances how do so you have to think about it. It’s not just a yes/no, but we we try to limit the questions so that you can – if you if you move quickly – 15 minutes. Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. Well one last question for you – can I get you to come back on, maybe in the you know, after the dust settles, and you’ve you’ve chewed on all the data, I would love to have you back on to to you know test some of these theories. It might be kind of interesting to see some of the early data versus you know, what actually ended up coming out. Would you be open to that, Warren – can I bend your arm to come back on the show? Warren Bird — For you, Rich, who who bent my arm to spill the beans already… Rich Birch — Oh nice. Ah sure. Good. Warren Bird — …Let’s let’s come back and let your listeners be among the first to hear what people said. Yep. Rich Birch — Good, great, good stuff. Well thanks, Warren – appreciate you, again. It’s unseminarysurvey.com – drop by there. Do it. You know, set aside the 15 minutes/20 minutes/half an hour. You know you got to have some focused thinking time – you can’t do this in the car on the way in the morning. Do that and and you’ll help not only your own church, but like you say thousands of other churches. Thanks so much, Warren. So glad that you’ve been here. Have a great rest of your week. Warren Bird — Thank you.

Welcome to this month’s Office Hours episode. This month Rich is taking on your questions about building volunteer teams, and reaching people who might not normally attend your services. Leslie Moffat, administrative pastor, Celebration Church in Brantford, Ontario, Canada: “For churches with multiple services, do you recommend the same volunteers stay on for the entire morning and cover both services, or do you have two different teams?” Volunteers and growth. // Churches grow because people invite their friends. When you get more people plugged into volunteering, that ultimately leads to more people coming to your church and getting plugged in long term. In fact attendance levels are typically three times the number of volunteers you have. Attend one/serve one. // A best practice for volunteers is letting them attend one service and serve at another one. This helps create balance so that a small group of people aren’t doing a large amount of the work. Attend one/serve one values your volunteers and keeps them plugged into the community, especially if they are serving in kids ministry.One in three rotation. // The best practice for serving rotations is for volunteers to serve one week and then being off for two weeks. The exception may be small group leaders in kids ministry which may need high consistency and are better serving every week or every other week. A three-week rotation for other positions in the church is easier than serving once a month when some months have four weeks and others five.WIIFM? // What’s in it for me? When communicating about volunteering, don’t communicate your need but rather communicate how the people in your church will benefit from volunteering. Don’t use the word “we” when writing about volunteering, always use the word “you.”Talk with groups. // The best volunteer recruiting tool is the shoulder tap. Look at existing small groups you can visit, and sit down to talk about the opportunities that could benefit them. Talk in a relational context, not an obligatory one, and you’ll see a better return rate. Create fun social times to let people at the church connect and enjoy themselves, and you can give a short talk about the vision of the church and getting plugged in. Jeff Peters, executive director, La Croix Church in Missouri: “How do we reach new people in our community who aren’t going to attend a worship service, either in the building or online? Also how do we build a more robust leadership pipeline that isn’t so staff-centric.” Increase the invite culture. // The way our churches grow is when our people invite their friends. We should look for ways to increase the invite culture, and not just on a Sunday. Churches can hold programs such as Financial Peace University to engage people looking for practical help in their lives. You could also offer Alpha, which brings people together to watch a video, talk about faith, and have a meal together.Go out to serve others. // Instead of telling people to “come and see” what your church is about, go out and serve the community. Look for regular opportunities to help make a difference in your community and get it on the calendar. Have the cash available in your budget for addressing problems that arise and consistently get out into your community.Leadership book club. // Start a small leadership book club which can help develop the leaders in an organic way. You can start out leading the book club, but then encourage one of the others to lead it in the next round.Campus expansion. // Think about launching a new campus to develop a robust leadership pipeline and volunteers. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Leadership Pathway If you are trying to find, develop and keep young leaders on your team look no further than Leadership Pathway. They have worked with hundreds of churches, and have interviewed thousands of candidates over the past several years. They are offering a new ebook about five of the core competencies that are at the heart of the leadership development process with every church that they partner with…just go to leadershippathway.org/unseminary to pick up this free resource.

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. I know this sounds like some homespun advice from your mom, but it does apply to looking for resources on the internet to improve the weekend services or announcements at your church. A quick search online will reveal an endless amount of templates and done-for-you resources that you can simply plug and play into your services; however, if you’re looking to improve your announcements, copying materials from someone else’s church is not the way to go about improving your church. It’s Time to Think Carefully about This Important Part of Your Weekend Services Rather than trying to take the easy way out and copying what somebody else has written, you need to find a way to improve this aspect of your service systematically by training your people and motivating them toward a better approach. Now, it’s understandable that you might want to simply copy and paste announcements. In fact, there could be multiple reasons why you would be tempted to take this shortcut. You simply can’t stand this part of your weekend services. It brings a hassle to you every time it happens.You’re frankly not sure what to say this weekend, and although you know that announcements should be done, you aren’t sure how to leverage them to move people toward engagement.You might even be unsure of why you do this aspect of what you do every weekend. As you look to improve your announcements, let’s talk more in-depth about why copying and pasting an announcement script from a website is a terrible idea for your church. Best Practices Versus Blind Copying Studying other churches is a good thing to do. Finding leading churches that are five steps ahead in various aspects is a great way for your church to level up its development and skip stages that could be holding it back as you attempt to reach more people. Here at unSeminary, we do this through our weekly podcast. For nearly 600 episodes, we’ve interviewed church leaders from some of the fastest-growing churches in the country on a wide variety of topics. We do this because we want to help you find the best practices to apply at your church. Blind copying, however, is a terrible approach because it doesn’t ultimately force the transfer of the understanding behind the practice. It just copies the end-state practice. Announcements Are About Increasing Engagement The musical worship portion of what you do every weekend is about transcendence. You’re hoping that people will connect with God and get a clear picture of His love and care for them. The teaching portion of what you do is about transformation as you open scripture and help people wrestle through how to apply those lessons to their daily lives. The hosting portion, while typically the smallest piece of what happens on the weekend, is critically important because it’s about moving people to action. It’s about moving people beyond just thinking and getting them to actually take a step. The announcements are the engagement engine!Talking about announcements and ensuring that you’re doing a good job on your announcements is about increasing the engagement at your church. Most modern airplanes are flown on autopilot when they’re flying in the air, but they switch to human pilots when they go to land. Similarly, announcements are of the utmost importance and cannot be done on autopilot. You need the care of humans at your church making decisions around what’s happening in this aspect of your service. If you are looking to increase engagement at your church, diving deep into improving your announcements is a great place to begin. Three Reasons Not to Copy and Paste the Announcements This Week at Your Church Your church isn’t in Alpharetta // Every resource you find online comes from a singular context and is written by a group of people that have a particular perspective on the world. While you might actually be in Alpharetta, Georgia, if the resources are from a different church community, then they don’t have the same context as your church. Your church is moving your people toward the next steps that you need your people to take. You need to develop a resource that has your community’s unique voice in it. Copying and pasting will make you sound like some other church in some other context and won’t meet the needs that you need to move forward.Your team has unique needs // You know that team member who does the announcements at your church who seems to get up every weekend and try to turn the five minutes of service hosting into their personal standup comedy routine? Or what about that leader who you really want to host, but they simply lack the confidence at this point to do that? No copy-and-paste resource will help you navigate the unique needs of your team. You need to move beyond these generic resources and find a way to train your people to build up their unique needs and approaches.You’re called to develop people // The training and equipping of people is core to what we’re called to do as church leaders. (Ephesians 4:12) Just because it might be easier to give people an online copy-and-paste resource that you found late one Saturday night doesn’t mean that it’s the right thing to do. In fact, a little bit of inconvenient training can go a long way in helping your church improve not only in the announcements but in many aspects of what you do. Training is a critical part of how we help people grow and develop in their faith. Looking for more help with your announcements? This FREE 3-part video series is for you. Are you looking to improve the hosting of your weekend services? Have you already tried improving this area but aren’t sure what to do next? Are you ready to take the next steps to increase engagement in your announcements and ultimately your church? I’m releasing a FREE three-part video series designed to help your church with better weekend hosting. The lessons in this series come from my practical experience of hosting hundreds of services in multiple contexts and coaching many other leaders in this area. The three videos are: Video #1: 5 Reasons People Aren’t Listening to Your Hosting. Your first video will clearly define for you why people aren’t paying attention to the announcements in your services.Video #2: The One Best Practice to Ensure Higher Engagement with Your Announcements. In this video, you will understand what the single most important practice thriving churches change about their announcements to improve engagement.Video #3: 3 Church Hosting Myths Debunked. Finally, you will dive into three misunderstood myths about hosting announcements that move people to action. [Click here to learn more and enroll for FREE today.]

Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with return guest Benjamin Windle from Life Place Church in Australia. Whether or not churches are going to opt in to the digital revolution is no longer an option. Now the question is, how do churches operate and minister in a digital world, particularly to younger generations? Listen in to today’s podcast as Benjamin shares research and insights on what Millennials and Gen Z are really looking for, and how churches can reach them. Understanding younger generations. // When it comes to digital ministry, we can be tempted to design our churches around convenience and comfort to such a degree that we shift the necessary convictions in our church. Part of this is because we may have misread what younger generations are looking for in church. We may wrongly think that they are shallow and interested primarily in entertainment and what’s “cool”, and focus our services on that. But instead we should see younger generations as a movement of thoughtful people in search of significance and authenticity. Be part of a community. // One of our primary needs is community. Loneliness among Gen Z in particular is epidemic and coincides with the surge in social media. We may think that young people want everything to be fast and easy and on their phone, but we shouldn’t be afraid of challenging them to be a contributing part of a biblical community.Seven layers of community. // Benjamin has found seven layers of practice to community in the bible. Preaching, worship, prayer, and evangelism can be done well online. But the other three are best done in-person: interpersonal responsibility, inconvenient hospitality, and institutional physicality.Interpersonal responsibility. // We all have a spiritual fingerprint of God with unique gifts and need to understand that we each bring something special to the church and community. We aren’t in community simply to receive; we’re in community because we have a biblical responsibility to each other.Inconvenient hospitality. // Benjamin challenges us with the idea that community or friendship doesn’t really exist until we are willing to inconvenience ourselves for each other. Inconvenient hospitality is a necessary and intentional part of God’s design for community, and it’s where richness is found in our relationships with each other.Institutional physicality. // Barna discovered that the thing churchgoers missed the most during COVID was taking communion in-person. It’s likely that Gen Z will start to crave the physicality of what community really is, such as sharing a meal together, as their lives are primarily focused on the online world.Reimagine, reevaluate, reconnect, and rebuild. //  Benjamin has put together a report with Barna called Digital Church in a Lonely World: 7 Ingredients of Church Community. It walks through the seven layers of community and also bold digital innovation. In this report Benjamin covers four words that form a framework for churches of any size to apply to any area of their ministry. These include: reimagine, reevaluate, reconnect, and rebuild. Download the full report from Barna.com. Learn more about Benjamin and his work at www.benjaminwindle.com, and listen to Benjamin Windle’s previous unSeminary podcast interview, visit Millennials, Gen Z and Your Church with Benjamin Windle. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: CDF Capital Since 1953, CDF Capital has helped Christians and churches embrace their part in this story by providing the 3 kinds of capital every congregation needs for growth—Financial Capital, Leadership Capital, and Spiritual Capital. CDF Capital’s XP Summit Cohorts provide an exclusive, year-long experience that brings together hand-selected global ministry leaders and your peers in an intimate, small-group setting. Visit http://cdf.capital/UnCohort to learn more and enroll today! Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Hey, friends welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. You know every week on the episode we like to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you and today is no exception. Super excited to have a repeat guest which, friends, you know if you’ve been listening for a while we’re 600-some odd episodes and we very rarely actually have repeat guests. So you know you need to lean in and listen to Benjamin Windle today. He is from Australia – senior pastor at LifePlace Church in Australia. Always good to connect with someone else in the Commonwealth. Ah, Benjamin, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here. Benjamin Windle — Well I feel extra blessed now knowing that I’m a special repeat guest. I’m going to put that down to the accent more than anything. Rich Birch — Ah, no, not at all. I yeah, we’ll link to your past episod.e I just am so honored to that you’d take some time to be with us today. So so glad to be here. Why don’t you fill out the picture a little bit tell us a little bit more for folks that maybe didn’t didn’t catch your first episode, which I think was just over a year ago. Ah, give us a sense like again, tell us a bit of your story. Give us a bit of your background. Benjamin Windle — Well I’ve been vocationally pastoring full-time for 20 years. Raised in the ministry, my father is a pastor; my father-in-law is a pastor. Oh my goodness – I couldn’t escape it. Um I now have a special focus on Millennials and Gen Z, from both a writing and content creation point, helping pastors think through some of the unique challenges of these generations, into which I fit, and that’s where a lot of my, I guess, writing and content comes out of. Rich Birch — Love it. Well today we want to kind of reflect a little bit. Here we are two years on into this pandemic and into the impacts that it’s had, and you know one of the things I’m hearing from ministry leaders across the country is there is like this surprise, a little bit, that here we are, it’s still impacting us a couple years later. We’re still very much in this, um even if the impacts look a little different than they have in earlier phases. But what has it felt like for you? Kind of what’s it felt like for you to be two years into this um this pandemic? Where is it what does it feel like for you at this, you know in this season? Benjamin Windle — Well I think it’s a moment, right? I mean to reach that two year mark. And as you said to kind of say, hey here we are. We’re still in it. Um, some things we we at least have a sense of this, Rich. Some things may return back to what they were. But I think what there’s a ah, degree of consensus on, is there are a number of things that have forever shifted and are evolving. And I think when it comes to the intersection of church and the digital space, that’s where we’re all asking a lot of questions and trying to navigate through what does the future look like here? Rich Birch — Yeah I know we all, one of the things that you know when we reflect back on that two years ago, you know I’ve been doing at our church, church online since 2009 so it wasn’t really a new deal. It was obviously super intensified when we, you know, when we particularly in those early phases of the pandemic. But what has changed over the last two years is like everybody has some sort of digital aspect of their ministry where even that maybe wasn’t the case two years ago. What do you think the church will look like in the digital age? What do you think, as we kind of peer to the future, as we kind of from this precipice where we sit today. What what’s that going to look like when we look to the future? Benjamin Windle — Well I think it’s important that we’re asking the right questions to know what our churches should look like. And I think we’re at we’re at an important juncture here in this conversation because we don’t get to choose whether or not we’re going to opt in to the digital revolution. I mean it’s fundamentally shifted everything about our lives long before covid, and in many ways we were laggards to um what it means to operate and minister into a digital world. So I think within that, asking the right questions around technology and that space is going to be crucial. And for me, you know we talk about this being a moment 2 years in, but here is a real moment for me. This is maybe six months in, Rich, um I passed ah in a beautiful state called Queensland in Australia—they may not have let us out of our state ah for two years—but it’s kind of like a prison paradise being locked in. So I go to the beach with my kids Sunday morning. Oh my goodness, first time in living memory I’m not in a church on a Sunday. Rich Birch — Right. Ah yes, yes. Benjamin Windle — Because we’re locked down. We’re shut down. I’d pre-recorded my sermon. I’m sitting there on the beach. There’s a little cafe. It sells baked Portuguese custard tarts, which I wish I could just right now bring you on a plane, just to get over here and and… Rich Birch — Little taste of heaven. Benjamin Windle — Oh my goodness. I got that; I got my coffee. My kids are playing in the beach in the sand. It’s wonderful, and I have this moment as a pastor: I could get used to this. This ain’t that bad, this online. I got on my phone, you know, the the Sunday service is streaming. Like this is… Rich Birch — Right. Yes. Yes Benjamin Windle — … a pretty good gig. Are you kidding me? If we asked this question, “what do people prefer,” we are at risk of architecturally designing our churches, and our faith, around convenience. And I guess I’m putting a little red flag, a marker, out saying, we need to be careful that we don’t orient around convenience, or comfort, to the degree that we fundamentally shift convictions in our church that are absolutely necessary. So this is, in some ways, somewhat of a cautionary tale. Rich Birch — Absolutely. You know, it’s interesting you say this because I think this, for me, has been one of the reflections here, you know, when this—whatever this phase is we call intra-covid, post-covid—whatever the phase is we are right now, where there were those people who I think early in the pandemic we we kind of sold them this idea that it was like, hey go to church online and it will it’ll it’s just like attending in person. Like we said things like that. It’s exactly the same. And then, you know, just recently it was talking to or my wife was actually she was talking with a ah young mom who, you know, said I I am just drowning here, like I we haven’t returned. We haven’t come back and um for, you know, one reason or another. And you know my as a, you know, what am I an armchair kind of pastor leaning in on the conversation, I’m like, I think the problem is that they are disconnecting with culture. They’ve disconnected with friends. Benjamin Windle — Yeah, yes. Rich Birch — They’re disconnected with community, and sure they’re watching the stream, but that but they’re not driving ah, you know, to a deeper um you know deeper relationships. So when when we think about this issue… I think this is a good flag, and we think about, okay, how we don’t want to orient around convenience, we don’t want to you know we don’t want to make our ministries about, hey it’s just easier to do it this way. Is that does that point to like a bigger problem? Does that ah, do you see that um, we may be thinking about, particularly our Millennial and Gen Z friends, in a way that like we maybe have misdiagnosed, that we’ve misread, what it is they’re looking for, ah when you think about that question in relation to the two you know generations particularly that you said you spend your time thinking about… What have we maybe be mis… misthought about them as it comes to digital ministry or this, even this moment with them? Benjamin Windle — Well one of those misreads is, when we think of these younger generations, how often we would say we think feel like they are shallow, or lack substance, or want everything faster, easier, preach shorter sermons and I think then as pastors we can buy into this idea that um services need to be more entertaining, stages and production sleeker, sermon shorter, more visual props. Um, and it leads to what I define or term as “cool fatigue” within the church. Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm. Benjamin Windle — And I think it is a misread when we think about these generations to think that’s what they’re actually searching for. What if instead of thinking that way, rather we saw new generations as a movement of people in search of significance and authenticity. What if we saw them as thoughtful, considerate (which they are), educated, spiritual. They’re hungry for a mission, and if that’s the case we shouldn’t coddle this generation too much. And we should not be afraid of challenging them. And to me one of the crucial challenges is this: the challenge of what it means to be a contributing part of a biblical community—whether it’s convenient, whether you feel like it’s easy, whether it fits into your lifestyle—the willingness to challenge them. On here’s what biblical community, true biblical community really looks like. Rich Birch — Love it. Okay, I Love this. There’s so much to dive in there on. I Love the “cool fatigue” idea. So I’m going to push you on that a little bit. Um, are you saying that churches shouldn’t have a primary orientation around um, how do we engage with the culture around us. Differentiate that for me because when I look around, I see some of the fastest growing churches in the country, I look at them and I’m like, wow, those ministries are cool. Ah you know as defined by, they seem to be trying to engage the the culture around them. Help help us understand that “cool fatigue” idea a little bit more. Benjamin Windle — No, we should try and reach the culture. We’re just misreading them when we think that that’s what they want. Rich Birch — Okay yep. Benjamin Windle — Ah I’m I’m yet to speak to a young person, you know take a 25 year old, Rich, and I’m like, oh why did you leave the church? I mean Barna tells a 64% of this generation who are raised in the church walk away from the church, or have walked away from the church. Why why did you walk away from the church? Well you know what, there weren’t enough LED screens on the stage. The the logo wasn’t cool enough. Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Benjamin Windle — The Instagram the color of the theme on the Instagram feed it, you know what, it should have been magenta Monday through Thursday. I mean it’s just it’s actually not the things that they’re truly searching for, and we have to go deeper. And one of the the key areas is there is a search for real community. Rich Birch — Absolutely. Benjamin Windle — Why? Because there is a loneliness epidemic. And this loneliness epidemic intersects with the surge in social media, online, and so we have 13 to 17 year olds that are spending over five hours a day on their screens. That goes up to nearly seven hours for older teens and yet loneliness – think of this – 79% of the same generation say they are lonely. Rich Birch — Right. Benjamin Windle — So you’re on your screen 7 hours a day and 79% of you say they are lonely. 45% of Gen Z say they feel lonely at least some of the time. These are staggering numbers that are coming out. So I look at that and when you say, you know, however you were to that reach in terms of like reaching the needs speaking to this generation. Well one of the primary needs is the need for community. Rich Birch — Love it. Benjamin Windle — Have we actually withdrawn and taken away the core of what they actually need because how we perceive them in our mind is: you guys don’t want any of that. You guys don’t want to be inconvenienced. You guys want it short, fast. You you want it on your phone. I’m not so sure about that. I think that there may be a reaction back the other way for a real search for what it means to be ah, a part of true community. Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. I was listened to a pundit recently who kind of echoes what you were saying. That you know, he was wondering if in 50 years from now people will look back at our generation, this moment, this kind of social media-obsessed moment in the same way that we look back now and you you see like photographs from the 40s and 50s of doctors in hospitals smoking cigarettes… Benjamin Windle — It’s our modern day cigarette. It’s our modern day cigarette. Yeah. Rich Birch — …and you’re like I can’t believe they were doing that all, right? Its the same. It’s the same kind of thing. Weird. Like people are, you know, we are generating this incredible loneliness, or the systems are generating this loneliness which ultimately ah, makes us do what? It makes us be more addicted to them. Interesting. So so how do we form real community? What are you learning on this front? How do we, how do we do that? What is that look like? What are some of the hallmarks of the things we should be looking for? I love a couple of things you’ve said so far, but let’s let’s kind of dig into that a little deeper. Benjamin Windle — Well it is the linchpin word – the word community. And actually defining what that means. So for example, we can say this: Well, we’re streaming an online church service and there’s a chat bar. So if people can chat, you know, we kind of we tick that off the list. That’s community. I’ve done a much deeper dive in this area, and I found biblically in the new testament there are seven layers of practice to the idea, the concept, of community. And many of those can be done very well online, and we need to know which ones can be done well online and which ones are best served in-person, at least at this point in time, so that when we have people in the room, we have people in-person, we know what we’re trying to achieve. So, for example, content can be done very well online – preaching, worship, um prayer, evangelism, but there are three layers to community – new testament community – that I believe are best served when we do them in-person. Rich Birch — You’ve set me up. You got you got to tell me what the three layers are – you least got to give me an overview. Don’t leave me hanging, Benjamin! Benjamin Windle — Ah, ah, of course – number one interpersonal responsibility, number 2 inconvenient hospitality, and number 3 institutional physicality. Now by means of just quick definition… Interpersonal responsibility: I was raised in an era of church—and I thank God for this—that there was somewhat of a demand placed on my life to give something out of the human qualities that God had put in me to others. And we all have gifts. We all have a spiritual fingerprint of God on our lives. We bring something special to a church community. We need to teach people this. You bring something that nobody else brings. You’re in community not to receive. You’re in community because you have a biblical responsibility to those group of people. And when you read through scriptures and in in the new testament, we truly do have a job description. Ah that aren’t just clergy or pastors or leaders welcoming guest warmly in the book of Acts. Um, working enthusiastically with people (1 Corinthians); loving each other as brothers and sisters (Hebrews); providing food and clothing (James) – I mean we could go on. So interpersonal responsibility or put it this way, Rich – are we actually a part of a community, until we’re responsible for other people? It’s it’s an interesting question. Rich Birch — That’s a great question. Yeah. Benjamin Windle — Next, inconvenient hospitality. This one for me is so important. Um I don’t think community or even friendship exists until we are willing to inconvenience ourselves for each other. Um I mean if we lived near each other and I get a text message from you one day, Rich, and you’re like, hey you know what? Um I need I need something – could you just pop over to my house and help me out? I’m like ah you know what? That’s probably going to take me like 8 minutes, and I’m sorry, but no, you’re just not that important to me. Um. Inconvenience is not an unwanted byproduct of community. It’s a necessary and intentional part of God’s design for community. We need to intentionally create communities that inconvenience people. Rich Birch — Absolutely. That’s so good. Benjamin Windle — Why? That’s where meaning is. That’s where richness is found in terms of other people. And then lastly ah when we talk about these three areas is institutional physicality. There’s more that we could say about this, but one example that Barna found is the number one thing that churchgoers missed during covid was taking communion in-person. And it’s likely that Millennials and Gen Z who live so much of their life online will start to craze the physicality aspect of what community actually is. Rich Birch — Love it. You know it’s it’s, this such lines up, most of my experience has been in over the last twenty years has been in the attractional church movement. That’s where I’ve spent most of my time, most of my thinking. And you know for years I would as a communicator, I would say you know I think we’re doing people a disservice when we talk about small groups, community groups—whatever you call them—in our in our churches because we oversell them. Um, we we tell, we say to people, we say get in this it’s… getting community is just as easy as signing up for one of these groups. And all you’ve got to do is like show up on a Tuesday night and somehow the magic of community is going to happen. I said you know I don’t know that that’s actually true – the communities that I’ve been a part of—this is why I love your your middle part there of inconvenient hospitality—the communities that have been, meant the most to me, they require more of me. I’ve got to lean in; I’ve got to be a part of it. I can’t just um, you know, I can’t just show up. It’s not it’s not like a group of friends, it’s more like family than it is like friends. Friends, I get together, we all agree with each other; it’s fun. There’s something about when I get together with my brother who kind of slightly annoying to me, you know, my brother and my, you know, like my but my physical brother. Um that I but, but I like love him deeply I have it’s incredibly deep relationship with him. And I think it’s the same in biblical community… Benjamin Windle — True. Rich Birch — …that we we have to find a way to go beyond just these easy convenient ah, definitions I Just love this I think you pushed on the right button. Benjamin Windle — Well ,well on that, Rich, and and I think you you’re pressing on a button right here when it comes to small groups. Okay, just for a moment right? Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Benjamin Windle — Think about what you just said there. We tell people like you’re you’re in our church. You’re literally in our church. But if you want community, come back midweek to somebody’s home and you’re going to find community. And I wrestle with that a little bit now, and I’ve been around it like you for a very long time, because I’m like, but hang on a second, you’re telling me that our primary gatherings, we are readily essentially acknowledging the central thing that these two generations are searching for in church, we don’t even have it here at a weekend. Rich Birch — Cannot find it here. Yeah. Benjamin Windle — We need to more closely examine that. It’s it’s like this: imagine going to a cafe to get a coffee and they’re like oh no, no, no, no come back. Come back on Tuesday night. We actually don’t do coffee here. Come back on a Tuesday night and you’ll get coffee to a small group. But you’re like, hang in a second, isn’t the whole purpose of what you guys do to serve this this item? Rich Birch — Right. Yeah. Benjamin Windle — And so again that just registers on my radar. For me, we have to reimagine church that everything we do has a community layer to it, and we can no longer say: our weekend services, well we know they’re not great at community, but just come back midweek at a small group. I think we need to reexamine that. Rich Birch — Oh that’s good I love it. You know I think there’s yeah, there’s so much we could talk about here now. I one of the things I want to make sure people check out is this and just incredible report that you’ve put together for with our friends at at Barna called Digital Church in a Lonely World: 7 Ingredients of a Church Community or of church community. Tell us about this report. What what led you to say, okay I want to put this together. This is a significant resource I want people to pick up, but kind of give us the bit of the backstory, the kind of setting up. Obviously we’ve been talking about it when talking around it, but give us kind of the the story here. What what led you to this piece? Benjamin Windle — Well I’m super grateful to be partnering with Barna and grateful for David Kinnaman, believing in this piece. We’ve put together a beautifully designed 69 page PDF that walks people through not just the seven layers of community—that’s part 1—but part 2 is bold digital innovation. And that tension is really important to me that on one hand we have an understanding of the layers in the dimensions to community, but on the other hand we have a pressing in to bold digital innovation because we are not immune to the digital era. If we fight against it we we will lose, but at the same time and I quote Christian Lewis Lang: technology is a useful servant, but a dangerous master. Technology both helps us and hurts us. And so I think it’s easy for us sometimes to become so grandiose or idealistic about the use of technology because it’s become essential to us. But I think we need to have a nuanced approach and within that nuance we are innovating in new and exciting ways, but that innovation needs to it needs to move, Rich. And it needs to become less about innovating in a space of content, and we need to start innovating in community when it comes to technology. Um I mean, for example, you think about this whole offline online thing. I can now order custom-made Nikes (my sons do this) on an app. Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm Benjamin Windle — Yeah, but they still physically arrive at my door and they physically put them on their feet. Rich Birch — Right. Benjamin Windle — You can go to McDonald’s now and use a touchscreen and put together your meal, but you still physically the food they serve you. Rich Birch — Right. Benjamin Windle — I order an Uber on my smartphone but a physical car still turns up, it’s not the replacement of offline with online. It’s knowing how these two marry together and how they can best marry together in terms of community formation. Rich Birch — Okay, so I know you’ve got ideas on that in in the practical world. Let’s let’s kind of frame this in maybe a church of 500 people. They’ve you know they’re not ah just your average kind of church – couple team members. What should we be thinking about when we think about our digital strategy? So many churches are wondering this in this moment. It’s like we kind of backed ourselves into this thing, now where do we go? I want to get people connected. I I realize we are living in a digital world that people are connecting online. How do I use that to leverage ah, community? What’s that look like? Benjamin Windle — Well we need to think of our digital strategy as a spiritual formation ecosystem. So we need to zoom out, look at it holistically. And there are 4 words that I cover in this PDF that form a framework for churches of any size to take a look at, which is number 1 to reimagine, number 2 to reevaluate, number 3 to reconnect, and number 4 to rebuild. Now if we apply that lens to areas of our church, like ministry, like what would it look like to reimagine social justice, and then reevaluate and then reconnect and rebuild it. What would it look like to do that with evangelism, or small groups, or missions, or pastoral care? And not feeling like—and and if you’re a pastor and you’re listening to this—not feeling like you need to be backed into a corner on this where everything now needs to be digital. Um I’m trying to give pastors permission to wrestle with the complexity, and to be able to say this intelligently, there are some things that digital does better. But there are also some things that in-person does better. Knowing the difference between those two is a conversation that churches of all sizes can have. And in fact, Rich, it’s entirely possible and I think likely that there will be churches just like what you mentioned who actually decided live streaming our Sunday service is not part of our digital ecosystem. We that is actually not the way that we’re good… Rich Birch — You’re you’re heresy heresy, Benjamin! Heresy! Benjamin Windle — Hey I’m over here in Australia, you know what I mean? Rich Birch — Ah yeah yeah, exactly. Yeah, we can’t throw stones that far. No I get it. No I totally understand that that right that it might be, you know, we’re not looking for a one-size-fits-all kind of solution. We need to look carefully at what is it that God’s called our church to, and how do we design a ministry that that weaves these together. Yeah, that’s good I love it. Sorry I think I cut you off? Yeah. Benjamin Windle — Um, and when I say they reached that maybe live streaming isn’t the core of a digital strategy. Yes, but it might be 10 other things, right? Rich Birch — Right. Yep. Benjamin Windle — That are done midweek in terms of digital tools and and there’s a surge in innovation in this space which for me is really exciting. Rich Birch — Yeah. Are there churches out there that you’re running into that you think are particularly innovating well that aren’t the kind of, like I feel like we all look at like 15 churches in the world and we pay attention to those ones, is there… can you give me an example of a church that’s like maybe we haven’t heard of before that we could we could kind of look at closely, and be like, oh that that’s kind of they’re doing some interesting things there? Benjamin Windle — Well I mean I think that’s a really great point because the digital space at this point, you know, there are certain churches that can just do that much better. And so I think that can be almost a little bit of a dangerous trend. I know it in my backyard in in the church that that that I’m a part of and and I pastor ah um, you know for example, one of the things that’s very important to us is asking this question: What can people, what do people get when they attend a Sunday service that they cannot get online? Well here’s one of the really simple things which they can’t get: a great coffee, and they can’t get a meal. Rich Birch — Right. Benjamin Windle — So I mean we we literally have a catering team and volunteers and our goal is to do the very best coffee you’re going to get all week. And that becomes not just an add-on like oh yeah, there’s coffee at the end. Um, ah our service starts with coffee for half an hour… Rich Birch — Right. Right. Yes. Benjamin Windle — …at the end we call it church part two. It it becomes ingrained in the culture: stay, eat, connect, talk. So I think there are churches all around the country and all around the world that are figuring out how to do what they need to do within their local context, and that’s a great thing. Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Well I I want to encourage people to pick up this report – I really do think it would be so helpful. Personally I see this as a great leadership tool. It could be a great thing for you to get your leadership team to buy. Don’t just buy one, and you know have a discussion around it. This could be the kind of thing that could lead easily to like a retreat away – you’re away for a day or two, really wrestling through this kind of content. Um, where do we want to send people if they want to pick up a copy of it – where how do we, how do we do that? What are we, what is the best way to do that? Benjamin Windle — Just go to barna.com – it’s available there for download right now, so head over to Barna. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good, so helpful. Well as we’re coming to wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share? This has been just a kind of the beginning of the conversation – I hope we’ll have you back in the future. But what anything else you’d like to say as we as we go to wrap up today? Benjamin Windle — Hey, can you even imagine if I get a third slot on this show? Rich Birch — Ah, come on it’d be great. Benjamin Windle — Ah, ah my central thesis in this paper is we need to embrace in-person community, whilst also boldly innovating in the digital space. A closing thought for me would be reflecting on the ministry of Jesus, and looking at how often he physically touched people when he prayed for them, when he broke bread around a table -like the beauty of that. Um, the physical moments of his journey that became a part of the spiritual sojourn he was taking the disciples on. You know, Peter physically getting out of a boat. Talking to the woman by the well – the well was an important part of that object lesson. And so the physicality of that has a beauty. It’s something that I think people are craving, and we need to go on the journey of innovating in the digital space whilst also maybe reimagining the wonder and the beauty of community and calling people into inconvenience, because inconvenience is where depth is; it’s where richness of friendship is, and it’s worth it. Rich Birch — Yeah, Benjamin, I appreciate this. For folks that are listening in I cannot more heartily endorse this – I really do think you should pick this up. One of the things I appreciate about Benjamin is I think there are people who are um, who are like obsessed with getting people to come back into our boxes, like you got to come back and sit in our boxes and that seems to be that is missing the point. It’s not the point of just get people to sit. It’s not a point to fill up our rooms. Let’s not get back to that, friends, but I appreciate your thoughtful approach around, hey this is what are we trying to do to build deeper community, and how do we you know, do that in in a world that is increasingly digital. How do we blend that well. So I really heartily endorse that, folks – pick up this report. Use it. Hopefully it helps spur lots of conversation. Benjamin, thanks so much. Anywhere else we want to send people online maybe to your own website – where do we where do we want to send them if they want to track with you? Benjamin Windle — Thank you so much, Rich. Yes, please head over to Benjamin Windle — (W I N D L E) dot com. I have whole whole bunch of resources and various white papers that I hope can be a help to you. Rich Birch — That’s great. Thanks so much, Benjamin. Take care – thanks for being here today. Benjamin Windle — Pleasure.

When you have a little pebble in your shoe, it’s hard to focus on anything around you besides that minor discomfort, right? We sometimes do the same thing with our tiny habits during our weekend service announcements. What about that little smudge from your kid’s finger on the TV as you watch the latest Hollywood blockbuster? Small distractions can deter even the biggest fan from concentrating on their favorite movie. People can get distracted by the smallest of negative habits that you might have when you’re hosting your weekend services. Your goal during these 5 minutes of “doing the announcements” at your church is to motivate people to spring into action. Part of the service is asking people to engage. These are incredibly important moments every weekend when you attempt to inspire people to plug into a group, join a service team, or give to the mission. Surely you don’t want a small (bad) habit to distract them from doing good deeds. Churches looking to grow in the future have to find ways to increase engagement. Jesus didn’t call people to “attend” to him; he called people to “follow” him. Engagement has been baked into Jesus’ message from the beginning! Eliminate These Tiny Habits from Your Weekend Hosting to Boost People’s Engagement Sports commentary // Commenting on the local sports heroes all the time or every weekend will drive people to stop listening. It’s a crutch when you don’t know what else to say—don’t do it! Add a high-value transition, like commenting on what just happened in the service rather than what your sports heroes have been up to. “Blessings” and other insider language // I don’t know what it is about doing the announcements that makes some people use “churchy” language. Rather than talking about how great the youth event was, they talk about what a blessing it was for the youth to be involved in fellowship in that way. What?! Use language that makes sense to people who don’t normally attend church. (And stop taking up those “clap offerings!”) Ignoring what just happened // We’ve all been in that sort of service where someone gets up to make the announcements and their hosting is completely disconnected from what just happened. It’s like they were only waiting backstage for the rest of the service to be over so that they can perform their part. Your announcement is part of the experience your guests just had. Treat it as the same service and respond to what happened and look for a way to elegantly hand off to what’s coming next. Shielding your eyes from the light // You go on stage and there are bright lights for people to see you. You want to be able to see them too, so you make a shield over your eyes with your hand. Stop that! It takes people out of the moment, reinforces the fact that those lights are there, and makes people feel disconnected from you because they can’t see your face clearly. Not introducing people // Who are all those people on stage with you? If you’ve ever visited a church and not known who was on stage, you know how disorienting it can be. Take 10 seconds to introduce everyone—it puts first-time guests at ease. Acronyms or fancy names // Does your church use a bunch of acronyms for various ministries and departments? Stop it. Acronyms are how insiders talk to one another, and they deliberately build walls because new people don’t understand them. Cut it out! Just say the whole phrase and avoid the use of acronyms. The same rule applies to “clever” but unclear names for various ministries. I once heard an announcement inviting people to a “keenagers” event. What exactly is that? Practicing your stand-up comedy // Sure, you want to make people smile—but you don’t need to practice your latest stand-up routine on them. Your goal isn’t to have them busting a gut in laugher but to simply have them engaging with what you say. Smiling is a great goal, but you don’t need to overshoot by making your guests roll on the floor with laughter. Weird prayers // One of the reasons we pray in public is because it represents what a “normal” prayer life is like. However, some church leaders fall into the trap of trying to impress people with big words or overly complex prayers. Don’t do it. Model a prayer life that uses normal language to connect with God. It’s a simple way to help people take their next steps in this important part of their spiritual lives. Not making an ask // People are anticipating that you’re going to ask them to engage, so ask them. Don’t leave them wondering, “So … what do you want me to do?” Make the ask clear and compelling. Say it in a way that draws a line in the sand and forces a decision. Don’t beat around the bush. We’re fighting to increase engagement. People need to know what you want them to engage in—so ask them! Increasing Engagement Is About Putting Our Guests First Ultimately, these nine habits are manifestations of us putting ourselves and our needs ahead of our guests. We need to think about how our ministry will be received by the people who are attending our services. Our goal is to start with them in mind first and put their needs first. We have to think a little less about ourselves and a lot more about them. Then, we must put that attitude into action when we host our weekend services. Looking for more help with your announcements? This FREE 3-part video series is for you. Are you looking to improve the hosting of your weekend services? Have you already tried improving this area but aren’t sure what to do next? Are you ready to take the next steps to increase engagement in your announcements and ultimately your church? I’m releasing a FREE three-part video series designed to help your church with better weekend hosting. The lessons in this series come from my practical experience of hosting hundreds of services in multiple contexts and coaching many other leaders in this area. The three videos are: Video #1: 5 Reasons People Aren’t Listening to Your Hosting. Your first video will clearly define for you why people aren’t paying attention to the announcements in your services.Video #2: The One Best Practice to Ensure Higher Engagement with Your Announcements. In this video, you will understand what the single most important practice thriving churches change about their announcements to improve engagement.Video #3: 3 Church Hosting Myths Debunked. Finally, you will dive into three misunderstood myths about hosting announcements that move people to action. [Click here to learn more and enroll for FREE today.]

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we have Rachel Long back on the podcast. She’s one of the executive pastors at Emmanuel Church, a multisite church in Indiana. Today Rachel is talking with us about building healthy volunteer teams within our churches. Take a step back and evaluate. // Back at the end of 2018, even before COVID, the staff at Emmanuel started to notice that the church had shifted from a serving culture to a consumer culture which was more focused on what the church could do for you. The staff knew this consumerism was the symptom of a bigger problem and so began to examine the themselves. What they found is the staff had become very siloed and volunteers were possessively claimed by staff members. Even leadership noticed that their language became more about filling spots on volunteer teams, and they realized they had slowly faded completely off vision. The staff needed to take a step back and determine where they’d gone off track and how to make sure their volunteer teams (known as Impact Teams) aligned with the church’s vision. Build a system that is a better fit. // Emmanuel began by looking at larger churches to see examples of how they could add some structure to their teams. After experimenting with a modified version of Growth Track from Church of the Highlands, Rachel and her teammate, Leah, began to build a system that would be custom-fit for Emmanuel. They developed six pillars which defined what a healthy Impact Team would look like, with the main goal being seeing people that have come to Christ then grow in Christ. This goal now aligned with Emmanuel’s vision and mission. Six pillars of a healthy team. // The six pillars Rachel and Leah developed are 1) Systematic Staff and Volunteer Training – things like lunch-and-learns, vision nights and even job descriptions for volunteer positions. 2) Appreciation – regular thank yous, infusing appreciation into team nights, and taking note of what would be a meaningful thank-you to individual volunteers. 3) Impact Week – a time where volunteer teams across all campuses come and serve during one week, all together. 4) Impact Team Night – an event six times a year where the campus pastor gets to preach to his or her campus and really infuse the vision of serving there. 5) Volunteer Onboarding and Data – has to do with making sure the staff’s data is correct because good data matters. 6) Vision and Branding – things such as branded t-shirts, using the Impact Teams logo, and communicating with language such as “serving opportunities” rather than “filling spots”. Showing appreciation. // Embracing more appreciation was a huge game-changer for Emmanuel and included not only new processes, but also funding their appreciation. They started with systematic thank-you note-writing and helped the staff to understand what a great thank-you note looks like. Staff learned to call out and applaud really specific instances where a volunteer had an impact in small or big ways. Emmanuel also gathers all of their volunteers in one place to celebrate them with a themed party and gifts. And one of the new things they are starting is recognizing and celebrating the serving anniversaries of each of their volunteers. Impact Team Night. // Adding Impact Team Nights every other month has been pivotal to the growth and success of Emmanuel’s volunteer teams. These nights are held at each campus and include a time of worship, some snacks and have a fun theme of some king. After worship there is vision casting which is done by either the campus pastor, the lead pastor, or a panel of campus staff. Then new Impact Team members will go to Impact 101 to start the onboarding process while existing team members will go to their specific areas of service for special trainings. Trainings might include going deeper in their service area, or prepping for a holiday or other big day coming up. Team Nights are a great time, not only to connect with other team members, but also to connect with the staff that is caring for volunteers from week to week. Impact 101. // During the onboarding process at Impact 101, the staff provides a tour of the campus and offers a DISC assessment to help new volunteers find their best fit. This time also allows staff to infuse into new team members the knowledge that they are growing in Christ through serving, and the volunteers are helping other people come to Christ as well. You can learn more about Emmanuel Church at www.eclife.org, or email Leah Torrison for more specific information about Emmanuel’s Impact Teams. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live! Transform Your Volunteer Culture with This Exclusive Resource! In this episode with Rachel Long, we dive deep into how to increase the impact of the serving experience on your volunteers. But why stop there? Take action with our Dream Team Night Planning Calendar: How to Host Volunteer Training & Appreciation Events—an essential tool to help you plan and execute powerful volunteer training and appreciation events. This 12-week countdown provides you with everything you need to host an impactful Dream Team Night that energizes and empowers your volunteers. Download this exclusive resource now through unSeminary Extra Credit and start building a stronger volunteer culture today! Get your Dream Team Night Planning Calendar here! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: FiveTwo It’s hard to know how to grow your church. Especially as you come out of a pandemic in a changing culture. But you desperately want to. You believe the church can still grow. The good news? You don’t have to do it all yourself. In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to find the right group of people who will help carry the load and bring growth to your ministry. You’ll be relieved. People will be helped. Your church will grow. Download this guide TODAY for an easy 5-step plan to get the right leaders on board. We’ll give you 5 surprisingly easy steps to activate your congregation. Episode Transcript Rich — Hey, friends welcome to the unSeminary podcast. My name’s Rich, your host, and this week we have a repeat guest which I’m super excited about. And when you when you know it’s a repeat guest, you know that there’s gonna be good things coming because there’s always more to say, so I’m excited to have Rachel Long with us. She’s from Emmanuel Church – a church that started in 1977. They’re 6 or 7 (depending on how we count it and when this comes out) locations plus online. They’re one of the fastest growing churches in the country. Rachel is the executive pastor and oversees multisite – all kinds of things multisite, strategy, campus leadership. I also think you oversee family ministry, HR, finance, counseling, outreach – basically everything! Rachel, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here today. Rachel Long — Oh I am thrilled to be back here with you today. You have such a great podcast that’s so helpful. And before we get started I just wanted to tell you thank you so much for the work you’re doing with irresistible teams. Four of my employees are going through that – they just started that process – so such a great blessing for churches. And so just thank you for doing that putting that together for them. Rich — No I’m so so honored to have them. That’s ah that’s a cohort we run I run it with my good friend Christine Kreisher and it’s it’s fun. It’s great to do. It’s good, you know, hopefully helpful… Rachel Long — Yeah. Rich — …and um so it’s that’s that’s really good. So why don’t you fill out the picture a little bit; give us the kind of …bring us up to speed on where things are at with Emmanuel, and how you know, kind of what’s been happening on that front. Rachel Long — Yeah, so Emmanuel Church is nondenominational. We do have our roots in… we were baptists to begin with and then that changed around 2005. And in 2013 we launched our very first multisite and it was about 25 minutes from our broadcast campus and since then we’ve been steadily launching multisites almost every 2 years and we just launched our… so well we’re getting ready to we’re in soft launch right now. So February 6th will be when we launch our sixth campus so very exciting time. We have but this is what’s really cool too – it’s our second church adoption, which is a whole new thing that we’ve done over the from 2019 till now. And it’s our first campus that’s an hour away from our broadcast campus… Rich — Amazing. Rachel Long — …So the challenges there have been different, but wow – such a great group of people and we are really really enjoying that. And Emmanuel exists to see people come to Christ and grow in Christ – that’s our vision and our mission – and it’s led by our senior pastor Danny Anderson who has led the church for just over 20 years now. Um he’s only the second senior pastor that our organization has ever had and he keeps the vision in front of us and it has been incredible to watch the staff move through covid shutdowns and only a few months of that and all the campuses to remain open. And wow it’s just been incredible to watch this team move through that, but right now I mean … looking for its next church adoption too… Rich — Love it. Rachel Long — So I am over expansion but I have really really great teams under me in each of those. And so our multi-site expansion team has three areas that we’re looking at now and it’ll be our first one that’s an hour and a half away from our broadcast campus Rich — Love it. Rachel Long — …so stretching out, stretching out and growing. But yeah, that’s just a little snapshot of Emmanuel. Rich — That’s so good. I’m excited about the church adoption. The fact that this is your second one and that you’re looking for more. That’s such a great thing. You know we’re seeing a kind of across the country 1 in 3 new campuses is coming because of adoption, so not surprising at all that… Rachel Long — Sure. Yeah. Rich — Ah, that you know you guys are right on pace for that which is ah which is amazing. So that’s that’s exciting. So when you think about you know changes maybe that have been happening at Emmanuel you think of kind of you know, maybe stuff that has that’s looking a little bit different that you’ve been able to kind of see some changes in the last year or so 2 years, what would be some of those things that would bubble to mind? What would kind of come come to the fore as you think about that? Rachel Long — Yeah, they have been some painful changes. We were not exempt from the great resignation that’s going on now where everything from corporate organizations to church organizations is seeing around 20% of their staff resign or go look for new positions or jobs and and take advantage of some things that are available to them. Not all bad, but I mean we’ve gone through a little bit a lot of bit of pain and stretch in that area. Um, you know our senior pastor was just talking to me the other day about how um the pain that we’re dealing with right now with this is what grows us into the leaders of the next level, and it helps us to move forward in in our own leadership skills. And there’s been a lot of honing – I don’t know if your listeners have felt that but um, in every executive pastor cohort I’m in, or group, they have been like: wow, we are having to really hone our leadership skills and grow in that way. And so I would say that we’ve had a little bit of pain with staff, but the other thing that has happened is we’re still seeing people come to Christ, and we are seeing our campuses start to grow and our online campus is still thriving as it was just a year ago when I was here. But also you’ve seen it change into some really ah, deeper relationships from the online campus than we’ve ever experienced before. And then people steadily coming back to our brick and mortar campuses. Um, of course when it’s safe and of course with practices that adhere to CDC but really starting to come back and re-embrace their faith, and find church was really missing in their life and finding their spot back in their church homes. We’ve still got a long way to go and it’ll take a while I’m sure. But that’s kind of what we’ve seen over the past year. So not all positive but always growing. Yeah. Rich — Love it. Yeah, love it. Now one of the things I think many of our churches are facing in this season is um some of this is like – yeah we were joking beforehand – I don’t know what phase we’re in with Covid. Are we post Covid, intra-Covid? Who knows, but whatever we find ourselves in we’re in this kind of Covid-impacted time… Rachel Long — Right, right, right. Rich — …is you know we we always need to… regardless of the season, we’re always looking to try to build engagement with our people… Rachel Long — Absolutely. Rich — …or we try to say, how do we… how do we help our people be more engaged? Um, but it feels like that’s even more urgent in these seasons, kind of, how do we move people from being consumers to being contributors to to being fully plugged in? Rachel Long — Right. Rich — Um, what has that looked like for Emmanuel What? What as you’ve been kind of wrestling with that process in this season, any changes on that front or things that you’ve been working through that might be helpful for us to to wrestle through with ah with our listeners today? Rachel Long — Yeah, you know it was even pre-covid that we looked around our organization and we started to see that somehow this slow fade had happened where we have moved um from in our serving culture in our volunteerism—we call them our impact team at Emmanuel—we saw like this—this was probably around the beginning of 2019…no the end of 2018—that we saw like, wow the the culture here has really shifted to consumer in our congregation, like: what can the church do for me, or do for my organization? But with anything else when we look when we saw the symptom, which was the consumerism in our congregation, we had to look at our staff. And in our staff we saw this siloed feeling, this siloed um: this is my volunteer; this is my person. And what was hard about that when we saw it was we realized that we had slowly faded completely off vision. And what I mean by that is Emmanuel’s vision is to see people come to Christ and grow in Christ and we had started using language that was: we’re going to fill this “spot”. So I have 4 children’s ministry “spots” to fill on Sunday, instead of looking at our people and thinking through, okay, what is the opportunity to serve that we could give them so they could grow in Christ? And really like focusing on that second half of our vision through serving. And when we saw that, man, that was a little bit unnerving because it was coming straight from our staff. And and if I’m being honest, it was coming straight from me. Like, you can’t ask them to serve in children’s ministry; they’re in the high school ministry. And back off – that’s that person’s volunteer and let’s don’t poach! And whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa! We began to think about like running a Sunday morning or a Saturday evening – any of our weekend environments – instead of, is what I’m offering, is what we’re looking at really helping someone grow in Christ, and fulfill the second half of Emmanuel’s vision? And once we started to get our mind around that, that’s when we started to see a shift. And thank goodness that we did that then because that infrastructure has what’s served us to be up year-over-year in our Impact team members. That this time last year in 2021 we were 1590 for our Impact team members and as of this week – so we check on Mondays – we were in 1834… Rich — Wow, that’s great. Rachel Lon — …so we’re still continuing to grow our impact team. Um, but it’s because of that infrastructure that we built back a little bit. But I don’t ever think it’s too late. That’s just what we’ve seen. Rich — Love it. So how did you push some of that change through, so from a change management point of view I love that you identified it, and then you started to make some adjustments. Were there, are a few kind of strategic levers there that helped, you know, make that shift for your people? Rachel Long — Yeah, we do what we usually do, which I know is a church protocol, to look around – what are the churches at the next level than you – what are they doing, ah right? And so we looked at Church of the Highlands, and we went and visited, our teams visited, and we tried to adopt their Growth Track without adapting it for Emmanuel, and that really fell flat. And it’s just kind of funny because if you listen to the first time I was on decentralization, you know that we wreck that train first, and then we did it better. But the same is true with… Rich — Ah, there’s a pattern here. There’s a pattern. Rachel Long — …yes yes, thank God we’re allowed to fail forward. Rich — Yes, yes. Rachel Long — And but we so we tried to put Growth Track in exactly as they did it, and it it didn’t fit. Like we were putting on a shoe that was in… and rightfully so because you know, at that time we’re like a 5000 person church at that time, and we were looking at a 30,000 person churches, you know, and trying to step into that. So what we did was very similar to the decentralization – pulled back and got buy-in. And so we gathered some people from each of our teams. Um, some people who are really good at recruiting and training volunteers, and we asked them like, what areas did you see things that kind of fell apart with Growth Track and what could we do better? Rich — Mmm-hmm. Rachel Long — Kind of a look forward look back. And when we did that um Leah Torrison, who is still head over all of our Impact team um information—and she’s an excellent resource for anyone that would want to get more information about this—she um and I worked to build a systematic way. You know, a system and once you can build that system and work that system, um that would fit Emmanuel. And so what we landed on were six pillars of what a healthy impact team would look like with the main goal seeing people that have come to Christ then grow in Christ. So vision-centered, but yet systematic so that anyone in the organization could resource it, and use it, and put it within their ministry. Rich — Love it. Yes. Rachel Long — And feel supported in it, and not siloed as a staff. Rich — Yeah I love that so just I want to get to what the six are, but before we get there, um I love just the I just want to underline for our listeners that, you know, this this is a best practice, looking at other churches, growing from other churches, but too many times we just do the copy and paste and we don’t do the step-back-and-learn. Hey, how do we adapt this to us? Like how do we so, you know, and and I just love that you’re, you know, you’re just being real honest about that and saying, hey we’ve got to figure out how this fits in our our context and and so if I understand the pillars correctly, you would say—and and correct me if this if I’m wrong—it’s like each one of these six, you would say, service teams need to have each one of these six pieces. It’s kind of like we need to work on all of these to ensure that it’s the best experience to fulfill the vision of the church. Like this is kind of like best practice for you in those areas – is that the best way to think of these pillars? Rachel Long — Yeah, yeah, that is what worked…this these are the 6 that we saw were worked… would not… that we weren’t doing right now, and that’s what worked for Emmanuel. And we’ve done this for um, you know, almost three years now and so… Rich — Mmm-hmm. Rachel Long — …There was lots of continuous improvement and I’m happy to point out like, ooh this didn’t work or it worked for that season… Rich — Sure. Rachel Long — …but we had to tweak it in year two because it was exhausting the staff. So you know how sometimes you go grand and you need to hone in small as you get going. Rich — Right. Yeah, totally totally. Hey, backup – let’s do this one thing. So why don’t we do this, give us an overview of all six… Rachel Long — Yep. Rich — …just kind of run through all of them and then we’ll dive in on maybe a couple of them that that were like the highest leverage change or ones that kind of jump to the you know the fore if that makes sense. Rachel Long — Yeah, yeah. So the first one was systematic staff and volunteer training. So we didn’t have a solid onboarding for when we had new staff members to infuse them with the culture of um servitude that we had within Emmanuel. And so then as new staff members come, it would get lost. So we implemented lunch-and-learns with that. We have impact vision nights, and also um, we had all of the staff…we challenge them if it is a position that is worthy of being an opportunity for people to grow in Christ by serving in that position, it needs a one-page job description. Rich — That’s good. Rachel Long — And so the staff, that was a key factor in um, this… in training in its systematic training. We also have … another the other pillar another pillar is appreciation. So regular thank yous, and infusing appreciation into team nights, and really pushing through on adding like a favorite thing to their their volunteer information sheet. We also implemented ah Impact week, which is kind of a cool thing where everybody comes together and serves in one week together, so being one church with multiple locations. Um and I can elaborate on that. It’s a pretty detailed process but it is going out into the community as an Impact team and serving. Team nights was… when we started it, it was once a month – now it’s every other month – that was one of the tweaks… Rich — Yes. Rachel Long — … where we gather together and we’re a video venue Church. So this happens to be where the campus pastor gets to preach to his or her campus, and really infuse the vision of serving there. Um, and that’s on our Impact team night. Volunteer onboarding and data. This is maybe not the sassy side of it, but this is the side where we made sure that our data was correct because good data matters. And then vision and branding – making sure that we have t-shirts and we have all of the things that make a team a team. Rich — Yeah. Rachel Long — And that that’s across all of the different serving… so instead of children’s ministry wearing one shirt and ah, you know… the only the only ah… what do I want to say, like exception that we made was because we didn’t want our production people to have bright red shirts on stage. They have black shirts. Rich — Yes, same shirt. Yeah. Rachel Long — But everybody has the same Impact team logo. And so the vision and branding – making sure we’re using the same words; stop saying “filling spots”; start saying “serving opportunities”. Those were the six pillars – those that’s just a quick run through of them. Yeah. Rich — Love it. Yeah, no, That’s so good. So good. Okay, so are were there a couple of those that were either real, maybe sticking points like ooh… you know, this this wasn’t going well, and by, kind of, your focus on it you were able to turn it around, or it was or they’re high leverage like, oh we saw real positive change because of the focus in in those areas? Rachel Long — Yeah, I’m going to start with appreciation. I know people say thank you and they write thank you notes, but here’s how we got a little more detailed into this one. We started with systematic thank you note writing. So I, we use this system called ROCK for all of our data management, and in that you can very simply just add that you’ve written a thank you note, but we became very very focused on everyone filling out – like if you sent a thank you note, or you did a text, or you called, it might seem laborious to take 2 seconds to fill it out in ROCK, but it helped the whole organization. So making sure, and and then talking through with people, what does a great thank you note look like, which I know sounds tedious, but not just “hey, you did a great job” and signing it “children’s ministry staff” but like, “I loved it when you…”, “you helped this family come to Christ by doing this…”, “this dad came to Christ while you were in the nursery serving…” – so being super detailed about that. And then another thing is we put some serious cash toward our annual Impact team party where we pull every single Impact team member. 1500 descend upon – this time it was our broadcast campus – and we celebrate them. It’s themed out. It’s ah, there’s a gift for each of them. We really put some serious focus and money into that. And what it did was the people who are at our Seymour campus which is a solid hour and 10 minutes away from our Garfield Park campus could now see all of the people that are… Rich — Mmm-hmm Rachel Long — …um, serving together and it really bonded that one church and made them feel like they were really part of something. And then we started doing anniversaries. That’s our latest thing that we’re doing for appreciation serving anniversaries… Rich — Oh that’s cool. Rachel Long — …and really highlighting that person, um and it is at their campuses. But then making them also be something that they can wear, something that they, so that they can be recognized. Oh you’ve been serving for 5 years on the Impact team – that’s amazing. So really, um, customizing, and then funding our appreciation. Rich — I love that. Rachel Long — And that was a really good transition, but difficult when you’re always trying to stay on budget and stay under budget from the year before. So that’s one thing that we did that was important. Rich — I love that I just want to underline something there. One of the things I’ve said to churches that I’m coaching in the kind of, you know, plus 2000 to 5000 range, somewhere in there, is there’s a weird transition there where um, actually you have to look at those things that very small churches do instinctively, and figure out how to do them at scale. And it was interesting to me that the two things you said would be easy for a church of 2-, 3-, 4-, 5000 people to not do which is handwritten notes – how do we systematize handwritten handwritten notes at scale? Rachel Long — Yeah. Rich — And then a party to get everybody together. If you’re a church of 100 people and you’ve got 32 volunteers, you’re going to do that. That becomes a lot more complex when it’s 1500 volunteers, but you’ve got to do that. Rachel Long — Yeah, yeah. Rich — You’ve got to do that and it’s actually, that’s a part of what accelerates that all that good stuff that happens that helps you get to that next level. I love that – that’s that’s fantastic. So appreciation was obviously a big part of it. Rachel Long — Oh, and just to piggyback on what you just said when we were in lockdown and when we could not gather that many people, we pivoted and did party to the people, and I just want to tell you what my staff did. Our staff—this is amazing. So we figured out a way to deliver their gifts and to divide it up across the 70 staff members so that we deliver gifts for a whole week. We put an Impact team balloon, all the branding, on their doorknob or mailbox and and brought signs. Some of our campuses dressed up and did 80s and had played music as they came up. Rich — Love it. Rachel Long — My group did cheerleaders. There were … it it was so incredible. We gave in a time when um—that was last year… I went our, ah in 2020—when our team was discouraged because they couldn’t be with so many of their Impact team members – to get to go out to their houses, decorate their yards, and it did it took a lot of time. A lot of finance. But it was worth it, and they called it Party to the People. And I know that that and and our Heart Touch Initiative that we did is why we kept so many impact team members and they were ready to come back – that connectivity. Rich — Um, so good. Rachel Long — And so I just, one, want to shout out to my team, and then two, just piggyback on what you said. Rich — Yeah, and I love that and again this is, that’s a great example of one of those if you were a small church of a couple hundred people you could think about doing that, hey, we’ll take a Saturday we’ll deliver stuff to people’s homes. To do that at scale it obviously takes a lot of time, effort, and energy, but it pushes back against that notion that large churches can’t do relationships well… Rachel Long — Right. For sure. Rich — …which we all know is not true, but it it really pushes back against that. That’s good. Was there maybe one of the other six that that stands out to you is like oh that was you know a really good kind of a key lever for us. Rachel Long — Yeah, our team nights. I would say this is probably the other huge um rock that we did when we started having, first we did team nights every month so that we could onboard, onboard, onboard. Well you, if you have a large staff or small staff, you know that the rhythm of their family, it makes it hard to have a team night, you know, once a month in addition to the services that are coming every week, and small groups, and added on and on and on. So we moved to every other ah month, but super impactful because one, you’re hearing from the staff that cares for you and that you see every weekend, and of course we and Pastor Danny goes to the different campuses and preaches and and vision casts on the different team nights at different campuses, but usually it’s their campus pastor. Rich — Mm that’s cool. Rachel Long — And they’re pushing forward um, whatever we’ve talked about the month before in our staff lunch-and-learn. That’s just focused on Impact team and then additionally at that team night we have what we call Impact 101. And we do in-person onboarding at Impact 101. Now we do one-off 101s? Yes, we don’t want to ever turn away somebody who’s ready to grow in Christ through serving, but the Impact 101 where you can have a room full of people together that are ready to start serving, then they do a tour of the campus, they have them do a disc assessment… Rich — Love it. Rachel Long — …Assessment so they find their best fit and the staff is really able to infuse them with that you are growing in Christ through serving. You’re not a spot. You’re not a spot. You are helping other people come to Christ. So that Impact 101 and when you put, I don’t know why but when we named it 101 instead of like Intro to Impact, that just kind of took down all the barriers, and people were like yeah, I can do a 101 class. 101 is simple right? Rich — Right, right. Yes, Yes, yeah. Rachel Long — 101 is fine. That that was common knowledge and common verbiage, and so that we we consistently have Impact 101 full at the at the broadcast campus, and really great attendance at our other campuses too. And so that’s been I would say the impact team nights and the onboarding process switching, pivotal, pivotal to our growth and success and new new people coming onto the team. Rich — I love it. Can we go one layer just a little more detail on them? So you do them every other month so somewhere around six a year there. It sounds like they’re at night, so they like and and do they include like, sounds like some, they’re somewhat like teaching – is there like a musical portion? Do they do fun stuff? Give us a little of the kind of, fill up with the, fill in the picture a little bit. Rachel Long — Yes. Yeah, no, that’s great. So there’s always some sort of snack or food at the beginning and it’s always… Rich — There’s gotta be -gotta be ah. Rachel Long — …yes, right, right? And so the whole thing is themed. Rich — Okay, okay, yes. Rachel Long — So whatever the theme is for the night. And the campuses have like a basic theme, like you could say neon. But then the campuses have the autonomy to make it however their campus sees fit and would work for their congregation. We have worship together and then we have the vision casting from the campus pastor and/or a panel – sometimes they do a panel. And then after that—this is a key component I did not tell you—after that the people who are first there, for the like this is their first time ever at an Impact team night, they’ll go to 101 and start the onboarding process. All of the other Impact team members, then this is when we have our trainings, so they will go to their specific areas of service, and if we know we have an Easter special coming up then whatever big day is coming then they’ll work on that big day project, or if they if we know that we’re gonna do special things in a children’s ministry for big day, then they’ll work on that. But it can be whatever whether it’s the online campus or whether it’s worship, you go deeper in your training than you can on a Sunday morning debrief. So they’ll go out to the different areas to serve and and it really, is it really is… we have every campus has two services so it is where you get to see all the people that you serve with… Rich — See everybody. Yeah family reunion kind of feel. Yeah, yeah. Rachel Long — …and you can you’re nine o’clock – exactly – and the nine o’clock worship team and musicians can learn from the eleven o’clock what’s working for them if it’s not ah if it’s not a campus where they have the same all the way through. So it’s ah, great time to learn from your other Impact team members and see all the high school ministry small group leaders. All those small group leaders from across the campuses. So that’s what an Impact team looks like. Rich — So good. I love that. And what what would you say on the you know, the Impact team nights is there? What’s the percentage of people—I have a feeling you and you know this—that are actually showing up to those? Like are they you know, what is that – you’re you’re good at numbers so yYou must have some sense that it’s it’s actually generating you know engagement Rachel Long — Yes, yeah, so we we are hovering around like 65 to 68… Rich — Okay, that’s good. That’s good. Rachel Long — …for several of our staff their Q1 goal their lead measure is to get 75% of their team to the Impact team night. So um, that’s a goal that we have out there would be 75%. Now you talked to Leah Torrison who’s over our Impact – she’s our centralized employee over excellence and continuity for that – 100% is her goal… Rich — Yes, yes, yes, yes. Rachel Long — …but I would say that? Um, you’re looking at we’re striving toward 75% through conversations and reminding them and, but when we lowered the number that we had, like we when we went from 12 to 6 in the number of impact team nights we have, we saw the attendance start to to go up. Rich — Go up. Yeah, that’s great. So good. Do you have any kind of documentation on any of that that you could share with us that would be maybe helpful for, you know, for our listeners I’m wondering if there’s anything we could put in the show notes. Rachel Long — Um, yeah, absolutely – I have a packet for you – even the DISC Assessment – we do it digitally and paper. We have that that took us a long time to build. I have that and then um, what. I prepared was just like starting in 2018 and moving through the whole process… Rich — Oh nice. Rachel Long — …Some of the foundational pieces as well as the pillars. So. Rich — Super helpful. Again this this is why I love having you on, Rachel, you’re so helpful to to folks. There’s so much we could talk about – maybe we’ll have to have you back! You know to talk about Impact weeks I think that’s a great, you know, the the idea of mobilizing, mass mobilizing people to make a difference again. We see this time and again with fast-growing churches that this is a key part of that strategy… Rachel Long — Yeah. Rich — You know, data is a big deal. You know I’d love to talk about that at some point… Rachel Long — Yeah, for sure. Rich — …it’s just a way we care for people at scale, or scale. There’s so much. Is there anything else you’d love to share just as we’re kind of wrapping up with today’s episode? Rachel Long — Yeah, yeah, just one more thing. Um, as we moved through this and we got to where we were systematically doing all of the pieces, when I met, when Leah and I met for the next year’s evaluation, one of the things we did was look at each pillar and build pillar teams. We didn’t start with pillar teams. We kind of needed to stay lean for the first couple of years of doing it. But um, the last year we have used pillar teams and it has been a blessing. And what I mean by that is like if we have ah we found five employees that are exceptional at appreciation in all the different departments and invited them in to be a part of the excellence and continuity in the impact team by participating in being a pillar team member. So now Leah meets with them, and they get to help with buy-in across the whole organization, sure, but they’re also a voice at the table. They have a seat at the table. To talk about what is working and what isn’t working, and that way we could stay super nimble with our impact team… Rich — That’s good. Rachel Long — …because we’re getting constant feedback from all the different departments in all the different pillars, and the lift is not one person but you don’t have to hire an entire impact team centralized for excellence in continuity because you do have one point person but you’re still getting all the information from the other, from the other parts and departments in your organization. Rich — So good. This has been fantastic, Rachel. I appreciate you taking time to be with us today. Um, where do we want to send people online if they want to track with Emmanuel. What’s where’s the best place for us to send them as we wrap up the episode? Rachel Long — Sure, our our website is e like Emmanuel c like church, life.org and my last name is Long. So it’s rlong@eclife.org, or if you’re specifically looking for information on Impact teams you can contact Leah Torrison which would be ltorrison@eclife.org. Rich — Nice. Thanks so much I Love that you’re giving out her email address. That’s fantastic. Rachel Long — Ah, she’ll love it. She’s amazing. Rich — Yeah, that’s great. Thanks so much for being here today. Rachel Long — Oh thank you. Thank you.