communications – unSeminary

Fostering Community in a Fast-Growing Multi-Campus Ministry: Scott Freeman on Effective Pastoral Care

Rich Birch — Thu, 07 Sep 2023 08:44:00 +0000

Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. This week we’re talking with Scott Freeman, the Pastor of Community at Grace Church in South Carolina.

As a church expands, there is a constant tension to manage between growth and deep community. Grace Church has experienced significant growth over the years with ten campuses and over 250 community groups. Today Scott shares about their discipleship-driven model of groups, and how they train leaders while creating environments conducive to life change.

Discipleship-driven. // When asked about what Biblical community looks like at Grace Church, Scott explains the community groups at the church are for covenant members only and are based primarily on location with a heterogeneous mix of people of different ages and life stages. Being discipleship-driven means they don’t only study the Bible, but also incorporate activities such as prayer, service, fellowship, and exploring how to live out the core values of the church.
Groups are campus specific. // There is a benefit to worshiping on Sundays alongside people that you’re in a group with during the week. The staff is intentional about putting groups together based on factors like area of town and shared experiences and gives a lot of thought to which people would work well together and learn from each other.
Check in every three years. // Grace has discovered that having community groups meet for about a three year life cycle is a good timeframe for groups to develop vulnerability and allow individuals to get to know each other. When the group winds down after three years, it also allows new leaders to emerge and step up to lead groups of their own. Making changes every few years in the groups brings in new ways of thinking and keeps people from becoming too comfortable.
Ministries in addition to groups. // As the church has grown, Grace has added other forms of Biblical community besides groups which offer special levels of care and work to complement the community groups. Some of these programs include Re|engage to support marriages, Re|generation recovery ministry, divorce care, and grief share to help individuals with specific needs. Rather than competing with community groups, these ministries have enhanced the personal growth and vulnerability of members and the community groups have benefitted from it.
Group life pastors. // Each of Grace’s ten campuses has one or more group life pastors who are responsible for a certain number of groups at their respective campus. The group life pastors work with the group leaders to equip them, offer support, and share best practices.
Keep groups engaging. // Curriculum for the groups includes sermon questions, reflection on past teachings, and a look ahead to the upcoming teaching. The church also encourage groups to serve together and provides access to additional curriculum through a church subscription to RightNow Media. The church works to keep the format fresh and different to encourage engagement, allowing group leaders to try different approaches so the groups don’t become predictable week after week.
Train group leaders. // Grace’s community group leaders are trained through an onboarding class called Equip. It asks in-depth questions about their lives to assess the leaders’ willingness to be vulnerable and share their own struggles. The church believes that if leaders pretend to have it all together, it hinders transparency within the group. In addition, Scott hosts a monthly podcast for leaders, covering various topics related to leading groups.

You can find out more about Grace Church at www.gracechurchsc.org. Plus, explore various training links and documents below:

Equip Hub // Contains resources Grace Church uses to train leaders and disciple people in their church.
Shepherding Values Hub // Contains relevant resources to equip community group leaders in shepherding effectively in their role.
Shepherding Values Overview // A review of the five guiding principles for discipleship at Grace for group leaders.

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Episode Transcript

Rich Birch — Hey, friends welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Man, it’s going to be a great conversation today. Really excited for this discussion – we’ve been looking forward to it for a while. We’ve got Scott Freeman with us. He’s a part of the leadership of a church called Grace Church in South Carolina. This is a ten campus church. There’s fantastic, they’re doing all kinds of amazing things that we’re going to get into dive into today. They exist to make mature followers of Jesus Christ there. It’s really a family of congregations in the upstate region if I’m reading my geography right. So, Scott, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.

Scott Freeman — Great. Thank you, Rich! Good to be here.

Rich Birch — Yeah, why don’t you fill in the picture? Kind of tell us a little bit of the Grace Church story, kind of help me understand more about the church.

Scott Freeman — Sure. Yeah. The the church was planted in 1995 so we are coming up on 30 years. I actually moved to the Greenville area in 2000, and became a member. I actually am not seminary trained. I was teacher and a coach previously. And so I attended the church as a member from 2000 until 2008, and then came on staff in 2008. So I’ve been on staff now in a variety of roles. All kind of in the world of biblical community for 15 years.

Rich Birch — Love it. There’s been a lot of change, you know, over that time frame particularly in this area.

Scott Freeman — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Why don’t you kind of give us a sense of that?

Scott Freeman — Sure.

Rich Birch — What’s what’s changed and evolved since, you know, that when you started even. It’s kind of interesting.

Scott Freeman — Yeah, when I when I first started attending Grace in 2000 there were probably 200, 300 attendees on Sunday mornings.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Scott Freeman — I think there may have been 10 community groups total. Um by 2008 when I was asked to come on staff, we had grown—it was still just one campus but—we had about 60 community groups…

Rich Birch — Wow.

Scott Freeman — …and one pastor was overseeing all of those.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Scott Freeman — And obviously he was feeling spread very thin.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Scott Freeman — And the decision by our elders was to add three group pastors to kind of work underneath him and take 20 groups each so that we could equip those leaders to then disciple their group members. And so so in 2008 we’re at 60 groups and one campus and now fifteen years later we are at 10 campuses across the upstate and we have over 250 community groups.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Scott Freeman — So we’ve definitely grown significantly since since 2008.

Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. This I’m really looking forward to this conversation because um Grace is one of these churches that is an outlier in a lot of cases. You know, we’re still seeing two thirds of multisite churches aren’t getting beyond three locations. Ah, and it’s it’s less than 1% get beyond ah six. So you know you you are in the rare, you know, rare air on that front. And then the same on the community groups thing, like is you know wide penetration. That’s I’m really looking forward to learning from that. But why don’t we start with kind of…

Scott Freeman — I sent you…

Rich Birch — Yeah sorry, go ahead.

Scott Freeman — It is interesting you say that with the with the three to four. Um I would say that was probably the hardest jump, was and and I was part of that on the biblical community side. I was not ah necessarily in in a lot of the decision making on that, but that was probably the the fork in the road where it was the most difficult. Going from 7 to 8, 8 to 9, 9 to 10 has not been nearly as difficult as that um, when really a central staff became necessary and the 3 to 4 was probably ah, a difficult jump.

Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. You ah at that phase you go from being a church with campuses to a church of campuses.

Scott Freeman — Mmm-hmm.

Rich Birch — Like you have to really you you can kind of fake it for a while there and like just everybody work harder. Ah, but that doesn’t scale. You know to 4, 5, 6, 7 locations for sure. So why don’t we start with um maybe we’ll start at the granular level. So when you ah when you define um, like a ah biblical community, what does that look like, what what are kind of the group’s experience look like? Help us understand that.

Scott Freeman — Sure. Um, most of our groups are made up of—and I will say our groups are covenant members only—um and a lot of the kind of the way we structure groups works for us. I would, you know, not say it’s right for everyone. I don’t think it’s a right/wrong thing but we choose to make our groups primarily discipleship-driven. Not necessarily outreach and trying to allow, you know, new folks to come in through groups. So with that being in mind it is for covenant members only. Ah, typically it is a heterogeneous mixture. We do have some kind of life stage specificific situations in different groups. But for the most part it’s a mix of marrieds and singles. It’s a mix of different stages of life.

Scott Freeman — Groups meet typically for about a 3-year life cycle. And um, they do a mix ah curriculum wise of questions that we provide from the from the teaching, weekly teaching. And um, we ah we asked that groups not just be a bible study where the group leader ah re-teaches the weekly teaching, but that they pray together. They serve together. There is fellowship. There’s bible study. Um, they talk about how to be generous with their time and their resources together. It’s all of our core values hopefully focused on as equally as possible during that group meeting.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. I’d I’d love to dig into a couple of those things. You know, the the whole um, you know, heterogeneous/homogenous group question. Why has Grace fallen down on the like, Okay we’re going to… so so are the groups then more kind of based on the region that you’re in? It’s kind of more, you know, like hey we’re in this part of town kind of thing? Is that is that what they look like?

Scott Freeman — Right. Yeah, yeah, um, you know, we do group our groups are based on the campus you attend. So rarely would there be someone from our downtown campus in a community group with someone from our Pelham campus. It is campus specific because we do feel like there is benefit to worshiping alongside folks, you know, on the weekends that you’re in group with. And then there are some just logistical challenges, night of the week, that people are able to meet, um area of town. We are very intentional though about placing groups together. Um, you know, we pray through that process. We do we are strategic and think this couple would be great with this couple. Ah, but there are a lot of times where we make placements and we have folks come and say, man, that was so awesome that y’all knew I needed someone who had also lost their mom because I’d lost mine. And we had and we had no idea. You know and it was just…

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s God’s grace, right?

Scott Freeman — Absolutely, absolutely.

Rich Birch — That’s yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that’s cool.

Scott Freeman — So um, so we are intentional about that. And there are some again logistical things. But for the most part it is area of town because we do want people in community with folks they’re going to run into during the week… and

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Scott Freeman — …and be on PTA with, and and see in the grocery store…

Rich Birch — Love it.

Scott Freeman — …and those type things.

Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. Um, now the 3-year life cycle that stood out to me. What do you mean by that? Kind of pull that apart.

Scott Freeman — Sure.

Rich Birch — When you’re when you’re talking about that with people, what do you say?

Scott Freeman — Yeah, um, now I will say that is not written in stone. It’s not, you know, an absolute.

Rich Birch — Okay, sure.

Scott Freeman — Um, we have kind of found that groups need long enough to obviously get vulnerable and transparent with each other, ah, get to know each other. If you um, you know, break up a group sooner than three years, it may not have time for that to happen. We’ve also learned that at typically around the three year mark um, things start to get a little comfortable, maybe a little bit stale. And often there are folks in that group that need to be leading their own group. And unless you kind of kick them out of the nest, it’s it’s not going to happen.

Scott Freeman — And so we’ve kind of, you know, found that 3 year sweet spot of starting to have conversation with the leaders um to say, hey you know, you’re nearing the end of year 3; you probably have some folks in your group that could lead their own now. We’re not going to scatter that group in 8 different directions. Typically it would split in half, maybe split into thirds. But um, the the 3 year change up does kind of, you know, give people a restart.

Scott Freeman — Um, I know we had a group that had been together for 4 years and when I first came on staff. Ah my boss was like you know I really feel like you’ve got some people in your group that need to lead. It’s probably time to to break it up. And and I understood the rationale behind it. My my wife was not happy when I got home and told her that these folks that we’ve been doing life with for for 4 years, we need to kind of go in different directions. But I did realize when we ended that group and started a new one just how predictable. I knew who was going to make the joke. I knew who was going to answer. I knew who was going to say what. And it challenged me as a leader and it gave us the new ways of thinking. And some folks went out from that group and um and led their own when they when they really needed to. And so they would have just stayed comfortable had we not have we not ended it.

Scott Freeman — Um and and we’re still friends with those folks we we haven’t lost community with them.

Rich Birch — Sure.

Scott Freeman — Um, so you know so again, 3 years is kind of when we start to have that conversation. There have been groups so we’ve ended after 2, just because it wasn’t going well.

Rich Birch — Sure.

Scott Freeman — There have been some that really started to get traction at that 3 year mark and we let it go 4, and maybe even 5 or 6. So it’s it’s not a hard and fast rule. But that’s kind of our our standard.

Rich Birch — Yeah rule of thumb. It’s kind of like that. That’s interesting. That’s interesting.

Scott Freeman — Right.

Rich Birch — That the other thing I heard you say… did I did I hear you say that groups are 14 to 18? You start up… that seems a little large, that’s larger than what I hear in kind of, you know, when you read a book on how to run a groups ministry…

Scott Freeman — Right.

Rich Birch — …you know, they they won’t say that.

Scott Freeman — Yeah.

Rich Birch — So is what did I hear that right?

Scott Freeman — Well if I said, if if I could create the ideal group, I would say it’s probably 12.

Rich Birch — Oh yeah, okay, great.

Scott Freeman — Um and but A, we run short on leaders…

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Scott Freeman — …and so spaces are at a premium and we have to you know expand. There’s also just the we our community especially you know the city of Greenville, lot of industry, a lot of people coming and going. There’s a lot of folks that ah, you know, um are coming in and out. And so there is some attrition in groups. And so we know that if we launch them at 16 to 18 they probably settle in at 12 to 14. So we do probably we launch them a little bigger than we want them to end up, just knowing that in a lot of cases that will happen.

Rich Birch — Smart. Yeah, that’s smart. That’s that’s ah that’s a great idea. That’s that’s compelling for sure. I totally get that. Um, now talk about, so the church as a whole has experienced tremendous growth over these years. And ah there can often be this tension of it’s the like get big, go deep. You know how can you really? I know, you know, this but like, you know, can can people develop actual community in a fast-growing church? Talk me through how the group structure has tried to support that. You know, the growth that’s been happening kind of in the church as a whole.

Scott Freeman — Yeah, I I will say and I’m speaking on behalf of our governing elders here…

Rich Birch — Sure.

Scott Freeman — …who make the decisions on when to launch campuses and that kind of thing.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Scott Freeman — I think one mindset on adding campuses that has been very helpful is that we don’t ah see an area and think, man, we’d really love to have a church in Spartanburg. Or we’d really love to have a church in Anderson. We have a group of people who are driving 30 minutes to one of our campuses from one of those spots, and it is a no-brainer to say, well let’s find a location and provide a campus in this community where people are already coming…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Scott Freeman — …you know, to to our church. And so it’s really um, giving them the opportunity to worship locally and invite their friends versus them having to commute to church on the weekend. And so I think that has helped. Um and then, you know, when you do have 10 campuses, you have 10 growth centers of people going out and sharing in their community about life change that’s happening. And um, it’s really, that’s where you kind of see the exponential growth instead of um, you know one site you’ve got 10 smaller sites that are growing at the same time.

Scott Freeman — And so that has that has really helped. But there has to be depth there and there has to be real life change or it’s not going to be sustainable. And I think people see that um, you know, we’re intentional about teaching the bible. We’re intentional about discipling people and helping them no matter where they are in their christian faith when they first come to Grace, helping them grow in that and grow deeper. And I think people respect that and want to be a part of that.

Rich Birch — Love it. Um, do you guys do any other, you know, things that might look like one of these groups but aren’t really one of these groups, like classes, or you know other types of biblical community?

Scott Freeman — We do. And that change, it really was a mindset shift for us probably 6 or 7 years ago. Community group was the answer for everything in in our minds.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Scott Freeman — You know, if you’ve you’ve got marriage issues, well, you know, get in a community group. You having financial struggles? Well, get in a community group so people can know you and help you work through that. Parenting issues? Community group. And we started to realize that there were and are specific issues that people need real intense focused help in a certain area. And so I guess the first idea or thing we launched was Re-engage which we got from Watermark in Dallas. And we launched that as a marriage ministry. In some cases people did that alongside community group, but in a lot lot of cases it was kind of a off-ramp from community group to really focus on their marriage for a season, get healthy, and then come back into a community group.

Rich Birch — Right.

Scott Freeman — Um, and that went really well. We have since added Re-generation Recovery Ministry. We have divorce care. We have grief share. We have a number of different care and recovery forms of biblical community. And we’ve really had to communicate while community group is the most common and probably the um the form of community that a big big percentage of our members are in, it is not the normal, or the the right form and all these others are are lesser. Um, you know in fact, ah in a lot of cases. People are getting very vulnerable and growing tremendously in Re-gen and then they’re bringing that to their community group after the fact, and our groups are getting better as a result of these other ministries. So we’ve we’ve had to view it as not a competing thing, but as the complementary form of Biblical community.

Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. And you know, I think that is addresses a practical concern, particularly at school, you know you know, as are as as [inaudible] not as school, as they scale you know as they grow you end up, you know by just by the sheer number of people, it’s like man we’ve got a giant number of people who are going through a marriage issue, are going through you know, recovery. And and so um, you know, if we were a smaller church we could maybe have ah a person in one of those scenarios in a group and kind of um, you know, just deal with it. But at scale you’re like, man, we got to figure out how to how to do that. That makes total sense. I love that. That’s that’s good. Can you…

Scott Freeman — Yeah, and and when when a couple is struggling, say in their marriage or someone is dealing with an addiction or you know any any felt need like that, and it’s week after week after week, not only does it they don’t feel like they’re getting what they need from the group, or the group feels like they’re monopolizing the time, and it really kind of shuts down. You know my wife and I might be on the way to group and have a minor conflict and think, you know, that’s something we should probably bring up to the group, but I mean it it would seem silly compared to what that other couple is going through. So we’re just going to stuff it and stay quiet. And so it can really kind of derail um, what the group wants and needs to accomplish to disciple everyone. So um I think those are the cases where some of these alternate forms of Biblical community become really effective and appropriate.

Rich Birch — Yeah, could you talk me through what what the staff structure looks like. So I think you said you had 250 plus community groups.

Scott Freeman — Right.

Rich Birch — How are you supporting those from ah ah, you know, what’s the staff structure look that provides care and, you know, direction for those groups?

Scott Freeman — Right. Um, every every member every covenant member at our church has a responsible pastor.

Rich Birch — Okay, wow.

Scott Freeman — And so um, they and they know they know who that is. And so um, at our smaller campuses there um is a campus pastor and a groups pastor. And so those um you know our smaller campuses may have 12 or 15 of those community groups. And so that one groups pastor spends a majority of his time working with those um leaders over those community groups. And then ah really his his main job is to equip those leaders to then do ministry within their group. He will get in involved and meet directly with members of those groups at times, but really to replicate himself and to um equip those leaders is is the primary focus.

Scott Freeman — And then so on some of our larger campuses, our Pelham campus is is our largest, we have four group life pastors um, who again still have 20 groups or so that they’re responsible for and they cover those eighty groups at that campus in that same way. So every group leader has a pastor that they have his cell phone number. They can call him any time a day. We have group life women’s ministers who are able to care for the female leaders. All of our groups right now are, because they are heterogeneous, they’re led by couples. Um, and so you know the men are meeting with with the men, the women are meeting with women, and that our staff is there to support those leaders as well.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s ah, that’s cool. Love love that. Um, when you thinking about you know the curriculum. How so you said it’s a mixture of sermon based and then and then are groups do like then picking other curriculum, you have like a set of other things that they can do? Is that what that looks like? Maybe unpack that a little bit.

Scott Freeman — Yeah, um, we encourage groups to, again, find times to serve together. So there are weeks where they’re completely outside the home and they’re going and and serving somewhere in the community. We do provide sermon questions every week. And and we do that uniquely. We have a couple of reflection questions on the teaching that they’ve just heard and then we have the passage that is going to be taught the upcoming week with a few look ahead questions to that. And so it really kind of creates some anticipation of what’s to come.

Rich Birch — Oh that’s cool.

Scott Freeman — And it really kind of minimizes the group leader’s desire or a tendency to maybe try to reteach what, you know, you’ve just heard.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Scott Freeman — So it’s a little bit of a look back and a look forward. It gets people involved with the reading plan, and hopefully create some questions that they may have coming into next week’s teaching, and they come ready to to learn. Um, we do ah, you know, we ask if they’re going to do a book or something kind of outside of the norm that they run it by us just to um, you know, make sure we’re okay with it. But you know if we’ve got somebody in a leadership position, 99% of time when they bring something up, it’s it’s great.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, totally.

Scott Freeman — Um, we have we have a church subscription to Right Now Media. So um, we we have group leaders that use curriculum from that at times. Um, we do encourage our leaders, you know, if there’s anything that you are um so dependent on, like we should forget to do the sermon questions one week and not it not be a tragedy. You know…

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Scott Freeman — …leaders ought to be able to move on and because things are going to happen. Um, and so we tell leaders, if you’ve done the sermon questions every single week for the last two years, you need to take a season and just stop.

Rich Birch — Right. That’s a good insight.

Scott Freeman — So the main the main thing… Yeah, the main thing is keeping it fresh, not getting locked in on one one way of doing it. We also encourage groups to just change just the group dynamic. So one week ah, you know, come together as a group but then have the guys go in one room and the ladies go in another. Another week maybe just break up into small groups of four. Because the more you can change the the environment, change the people that folks are around, you never know which setting is going to allow someone to confess something, to bring up something that they’ve been scared to bring up. And so we just want to create as many different environments as possible so that life change can happen through that.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s that’s cool. I love that. There’s obviously, you know, I love the direct connection, you know, that every group leader or couple has, you know, some people that they can interact with. Love that; I think that’s fantastic. Obviously a really great support in the background from that that point of view. But what other training, if I’m a community group leader, what other training am I getting kind of ongoing ah throughout the three years that I’m journeying that maybe like, do you do classes for them…

Scott Freeman — Right.

Rich Birch — …or you know, what does what does that look like?

Scott Freeman — Yeah, we have a group we have ah ah, an onboarding class called Equip and it’s as much vetting as it is training.

Rich Birch — Right.

Scott Freeman — We we have very um in-depth questions, I kind of icebreakers that are asking, um you you know, hey what’s the biggest challenge you’ve had in your marriage in the last year? What is your biggest failure as a parent? And we just want to see are you willing to share, are you willing to be honest about your own struggles? Because we don’t want you to go into a group as a leader and act like you have it all together, because you don’t.

Rich Birch — Right.

Scott Freeman — And that’s not gonna promote, you know, transparency in the people that are in your group as well. Um, you know we even asked leaders, hey imagine that a year from now you’re disqualified from ministry. What sin pattern would it be that that got you there?

Rich Birch — Wow.

Scott Freeman — And just make people think through um those type real, you know, struggles and questions. So we do um, a lot of that a lot of, you know, shepherding ideas. We use a lot of Paul Tripp material with ah Love-Know-Speak-Do um. Ah so we train them um, before we launch them as leaders with material like that. And then once they are leading I do a monthly podcast about just a um, a topic related to leading groups. It might be struggling with you know your group struggling with attendance. It might be how to lead the singles in your groups well. It might be um, you know, ideas of service projects that you can do, different things. Um, so just each month I put something out like that. It goes to all 250 leaders. And then our group pastors are in constant communication with those leaders, whether it’s a quick conversation on a Sunday morning between services, or a huddle where the pastor gets 5 or 6 group leaders together and they just share, hey here’s a challenge I’ve got. How would you handle that? You know, and just sharing best practices and ideas. So um, we we definitely don’t want to train them and say, all right call us if you have any issues, and not be proactive about continuing…

Rich Birch — Ah, good luck.

Scott Freeman — Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, you’re ready – go for it.

Rich Birch — Ah we’ll see in 3 years.

Scott Freeman — Yeah, that’s right.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, okay. That’s cool. That’s really cool. Now when you look to the future, what are some questions that are on the horizon for you – stuff that you’re wrestling with, thinking through, hmm like I wonder, you know, maybe some things that you’re, you know, thinking about – do we… should we change up, that kind of thing?

Scott Freeman — Yeah, um, you know, I think we’ve had tension on um, how much freedom to give leaders and then how much to legislate. Um you know, I think if we if we give too much direction and “you have to do this, you have to do this, you have to do this”, then our more capable leaders feel stifled and are kind of like, you know, you really you could get anybody to do that.

Rich Birch — Yeah, you don’t need me.

Scott Freeman — I’ve just become, you know…that’s right. Um, but then some of our our newer leaders who might need more support. Um, and so I think finding that balance of providing enough direction and support for them without stifling the leaders. You know, we’ve got a lot of leaders who are CEOs during the week in their company, and then telling them how they have to take attendance, or how they have to do this. And and giving them some freedom in that and just, you know, releasing some of that to them and say, hey you’re a leader. We trust you we want to come alongside you and help you do that. But I would say that’s a challenge that um that we’re wrestling with. And then just constantly trying to keep the leadership pipeline going and making sure that we have enough leaders. If we do, you know, if God continues to bless us and we do continue to grow in the way that we have, that we have enough leaders to to lead those folks that that God brings to us in the in the years to come.

Rich Birch — Love it. Do you guys do like um like mult… like kind of entry points during the year like groups are starting kind of in seasons or are they just starting all the time.

Scott Freeman — Yeah, um, we do start I guess there are two main, you know, beginning of the spring, beginning of the fall.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Scott Freeman — Our smaller campuses have a little bit more flexibility because the membership class or the entry point might have 4 or 6 or 10 people coming at a time versus a bigger campus that has, you know dozens coming at a time. And so there is some flexibility and our smaller campuses may launch a little bit more often. Um, we have we’ve tried events, like we did ah a group launch…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Scott Freeman — …um which started to feel a lot like rushed or speed dating…

Rich Birch — Okay, yes, yes.

Scott Freeman — …I heard some people call it. Um, and so we’ve we’ve tried to not make it feel like that, but also be intentional and help people find a group as quickly as possible. Um I think we we felt more tension when community group was the only form of biblical community to get people in quickly. Whereas now that we have men’s and women’s ministry, and we have Re-engage, and we have Re-gen, there are a lot of ways that folks can get connected ah in the window of time between them arriving at the church and then actually getting placed in a community group. You know, even if they show up in February and we’re not launching groups until August, there are plenty of ways to get connected to get them involved and and disciple them before they get into a community group in August so.

Rich Birch — Interesting. This is this been fantastic. It’s like been a great, I got a page of notes here. Look it’s like looking up under the hood of everything that’s going on at your church. I love that. Just as we’re kind of coming to the end here, is there anything else you love to share to kind of give us a sense of what’s going on in your, you know, Biblical community at the church?

Scott Freeman — Um, I mean I would just say all the ideas and things that we used or most of it we’ve we’ve stolen from other people, you know.

Rich Birch — Yes, absolutely, absolutely. Yeah for sure.

Scott Freeman — Especially in the early in the early days we we met with a ton of other folks to figure out what it looked like to um, to do groups. And and some of that stuff we’ve held onto, some stuff we’ve changed. Um I will I will share some documents with you that we can, you know, include…

Rich Birch — Oh great.

Scott Freeman — …include in the show notes that folks can um you know use and take and change and do whatever they want to with.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Scott Freeman — But ah you know, if we can pay that forward and and help folks um I know when we first went to Watermark and saw the scale that they were doing Re-gen and Re-engage, I kind of thought there’s no way we’ll ever do it at this scale. And I know that there are people that look at our church and think the same thing. And I would just say you really you can scale any of these ideas to whatever size you’re at currently and it can um it can still work. So.

Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. What what would be some of the documents or maybe talk us through what those would be because so people could, we’ll put them in the show notes, friends, we’ll link there.

Scott Freeman — Yeah.

Rich Birch — But give us a sense of what some of those are, or or you know one that’s particularly helpful you think oh this could be really good for church leaders.

Scott Freeman — Sure, the um the Equip class that we use for onboarding leaders and training them, I can include kind of what we do for that.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Scott Freeman — We did take those Paul Tripp ideas and expand them into just some shepherding values that we want our leaders to um, you know, to love their groups, um, you know to know them thoroughly, to love them patiently, to speak wisely and direct biblically, and um, you know, to pray throughout all of that. Um, and so there are some ah things that we’ve created around that idea that I can put in there.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Scott Freeman — And um, yeah, just just a lot of you know again things that we’ve stolen from other churches through the years…

Rich Birch — Yes, love it.

Scott Freeman — …and kind of tweak to make our own. So.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good; that that’s so helpful. I really appreciate that, Scott. That’ll be that’ll be a great resource for for folks to take a look at. And you know, I know we’re always looking to kind of learn from each other and that’s a great a great way to do that. So thank you. Well, I really appreciate you being on the show today. If we want to send people somewhere online to track with you, track with the church, where do we want to send them to do that?

Scott Freeman — Yeah, our website is gracechurchsc.org – sc as in South Carolina and yeah I would encourage we have you know teaching on there. We have a lot of our curriculum from our men’s roundtable, from our Ezer women’s ministry that ah, that might be of help. And um and all of our staff I know that one of my favorite things is meeting with folks from other churches and…

Rich Birch — Totally.

Scott Freeman — …and sharing ideas because we we learn as much as we um share, probably more. So um, ah feel free to to reach out and email and we’re we’re here to help any way we can.

Rich Birch — That’s wonderful. Thanks so much for being on the show today, Scott. Really appreciate you. Thanks for being here, man.

Scott Freeman — Yeah, thank you. Thanks for what you do.

He Gets Us: Kyle Isabelli on Reaching Out to Non-Christians with Gloo

Rich Birch — Thu, 24 Aug 2023 08:44:00 +0000

Thanks for tuning in for this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re chatting with Kyle Isabelli, the lead pastor of Avenue Christian Church in the western suburbs of Chicago.

Wondering how to connect with hurting people in your community who might not venture through your church’s doors? In today’s episode Kyle and I have a fantastic conversation about the church’s community outreach efforts using the He Gets Us campaign and the Gloo platform. Listen in to hear how you can use these free digital tools to connect with and care for your community.

Gloo and He Gets Us. // Since COVID, Avenue Christian Church has utilized resources that Gloo and Barna offer to churches. In addition to church health and spiritual health assessments, Kyle and his team began to explore the He Gets Us campaign and the connection that Gloo provides to it. The He Gets Us campaign invites people to get to know the real Jesus. It communicates that Jesus understands them and that whatever people are experiencing, Jesus faced it too. He Gets Us became more widely known after two of their ads aired during the Super Bowl in 2023. In addition to being on TV, their ads are also online and on billboards.
The local church partnership. // The He Gets Us campaign messaging engages people in areas where they are struggling and invites them to reach out for help via text. When someone reaches out with a question or a need, the Gloo platform then forwards the messages to local partnering churches. As a partner in the campaign, Avenue Christian Church receives messages from people in their area code seeking help or encouragement so they can respond with practical care.
The response. // As a He Gets Us partner, Avenue gets an average of two to three messages per week forwarded to them. They then respond to the person, letting them know who they are, the church they are from, and that they are available to talk. When they reach out, they have a 50% response rate, with about half of those interactions leading to phone conversations or connecting individuals to the church through attending a service or coming to a small group.
Behind the scenes platform. // Gloo has an online platform that your church can sign up for where all of the contact data is stored. You can send a text message or make a phone call through Gloo and track when you were last in touch with your contacts. If the contacts have opted in to receive communications from your church, you can also export the data to Excel and use it in your church management software. In addition, Gloo offers a host of other high quality resources including prayer prompts, sermon tools, reading plans, discussion guides and more.
Less promotion, more care. // Working with Gloo has helped remind Avenue Christian Church that their digital strategy has to be less about self-promotion and more about how to provide care for people in the community, listen to what their going through, and meet their needs while sharing the gospel.

You can find out more about Gloo at gloo.us and how to partner with the He Gets Us campaign at hegetsuspartners.com. To learn more about Avenue Christian Church visit www.avenuechristian.com and connect with Kyle at www.kyleisabelli.com.

Thank You for Tuning In!

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 church leaders and individuals bring light to the world through the thoughtful stewardship of their capital. The Church, including your church, requires more than just financial capital, it also needs spiritual and leadership capital. While separate in purpose, these three forms of capital are intertwined and inseparable for the cause of kingdom growth. Together, when we partner with the Lord to bring spiritual, leadership, and financial capital to a church, the results are transformational. At CDF Capital our ministry is simple: we lend money to churches.

CDF Capital, in partnership with Barna Group, conducted a research study to better understand what happens in churches after a new leader comes in. Barna Group interviewed 111 pastors online who have experienced a leadership transition within the last 12 years. Click here to get your free download of the study.

Episode Transcript

Rich Birch — Well hey everybody, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Man, I’m really looking for to today’s conversation. In fact it’s been probably six months in the making; really been looking forward to today’s call. You’re going to want to lean in for this one. We’ve got Kyle Isabelli – he is at Avenue Christian Church. It’s a multi-generational church that represents the western suburbs of Chicago as they ah help people live their best life with Jesus in charge. Kyle, I’m so glad you’re here. Welcome to the show. Thanks for being here today.

Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, thanks Rich. I’m excited to have this conversation with you today.

Rich Birch — Yeah, why don’t you fill in the picture about Avenue? What is tell us a little bit more; give us a kind of a flavor, a sense of the church.

Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, Avenue is a church that has been in the western suburbs for over 60 years. It was originally started in suburbs a little bit closer to the city. And then the mid 60s it it made its way out to Clarendon Hills which is, some people may not know, it’s Downers Grove, Hinsdale for about 30 minutes outside of the city. And they’ve had a heart to really reach the the community, and really be a light in the community. And I’ve been the senior pastor here now since January 2020. And prior to that I was here as a youth pastor, started in 2017. So I’ve been here six years. And it’s been cool to be a part of a church that really is multigenerational, that we have new, younger families that are here, but you also have people here at our church that have been here longer than I’ve been alive, you know. So it’s it’s such a blessing to be able to lead in this context and to see God work and move in really helping more and more people find new life in Christ.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. This um, so today what we want you… we got connected on Carey Nieuwhof’s online community called The Art of Leadership Academy. And you posted in there about your church’s participation in the He Gets Us campaign. If people remember this Super Bowl 2023 a big ad on that, a whole campaign built around that by our friends or powered by our friends at Gloo and, you know, associated other folks. And so today we’re going to dive in this is kind of we’re going to open up the hood take a look at what happened at Avenue understand ah you know, kind of lessons learned, that sort of thing. But why don’t we start with, you know, what led you to say, hey this is the kind of thing we want to be a part of? What kind of got you to that?

Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, our our church throughout covid had been utilizing a lot of the resources that Barna and Gloo had been sharing with churches. We used a lot of the church health assessments. And the Summer 2022 we had our entire church take kind of like a spiritual survey to gauge their spiritual health as as well as like ways that we as leaders in the church can do a better job of caring for our church. So we’ve been utilizing Gloo for quite some time, Barna quite some time.

Kyle Isabelli — And so we began to hear about the He Gets Us ads which actually launched in March of 2022 during the and NCAA college tournament, the basketball tournament. And so you see a few of these ads coming out, you’re like what’s all this about? And so Gloo then begins to share how these ads are posted on social media, and if people text in saying oh that resonates with me, or I have a question about that, or something speaks to me in that way, they text in. And what Gloo does is then sends those text messages to local churches.

Kyle Isabelli — So for instance, if someone has an area code that is close by our church—so here in the western suburbs it’s a 630, a 708 or an 815 area code—um our church then would receive that text message. So for instance, someone struggle with anxiety, and they see the ad about anxiousness and they want some help or encouragement with it, they’ll they’ll text in: hey, I need help with this; I’m feeling anxious. And we get that message to our platform through Gloo. And so then we’re able to start a conversation with them. We’re starting to text them and and be able to, you know, engage in conversation. And this has been so incredibly helpful because over these last few years in our polarized society um churches and pastors especially our credibility just within society has kind of decreased. I think leadership in general…

Rich Birch — True.

Kyle Isabelli — …our credibility has gone down for better or for worse…

Rich Birch — Sure, sure.

Kyle Isabelli — …whether we did that to ourselves or we’re just a byproduct of being a leader or a pastor or church. Um that’s just the reality of where we’re at. One of the things in Barna, ah Glenn Packiam in his book about being a resilient pastor, he shares that like 55% of people have little to no trust in pastors and church leadership. They don’t they don’t view them as a credible source.

Kyle Isabelli — And so now to overcome that um, people are able to, you know, get connected with the pastor or church with that. They probably wouldn’t have thought of before, but they’re willing to have a conversation about what they’re struggling with it. And it opens up this this gateway to, hey this is I’m a pastor um, from this church. Can we let’s just talk about your anxiety. Let’s just talk about whatever is going on. And so it’s allowed us to kind of reach into our community even more despite people not having the best thoughts or feelings about a church whether for better or for worse.

Rich Birch — That’s interesting. Can can you give me a sense, so we’ll start with the kind of anecdotal story like you know, maybe somebody that you’ve ended up connecting with as a church and the impact the kind of positive impact either through He Gets Us or pre-, you know, He Gets Us with the other work you’ve done with Gloo.

Kyle Isabelli — Yeah. I mean for instance I met with a guy a few weeks ago. He texted, he said he was having marriage problems, he was on a second separation. And so I texted, said, hey, you know I’m really sorry to hear that. Would you be willing to come in and like have a conversation with me? I’m not a marriage counselor, but I can least have this initial conversation with you. And so he came in. We began to talk and um, you know, shared the gospel with him. And said, you know, I I hope your marriage can be restored and there’s some things that you definitely have to work on. But like I want you to know what’s really going to make a change in your life and hopefully from that spiritual change in your heart then you can see changes in other parts of your life. And he’s like he’s like, I went to church growin’ up. No one’s ever told me about Jesus in this way; I don’t read my bible. And so I gave him a bible here at our church. I said, hey start reading through this.

Kyle Isabelli — And um, so now for these last couple weeks I’ve met with him once or twice, we talked through, he’s attended one of our church services. Um, still working through his separation, working with the details of that, but um, just trying to help people out. And I would have never…

Rich Birch — Right.

Kyle Isabelli — …had that conversation with him apart from him clicking on an ad from He Gets Us on, I think it was on Tiktok.

Rich Birch — Right.

Kyle Isabelli — I dunno which ad it was…

Rich Birch — Sure.

Kyle Isabelli — …but he clicked on it. We got the message. And the conversation and the relationship really started because of that.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing. So this is what I love about our friends at Gloo. Like they’re, you know, they’re empowering churches. They’ve developed tools. You know, there’s a number of things that they’ve tried to do to help people, um you know, help church leaders connect with their community. And there is often, you know, a lot of their solutions are built around this idea of providing actual care for people, which I think is amazing, is fantastic. So what about on the kind of, I’m sure there’s people that are listening in that are like, what about so how many, is that like the one conversation you’ve had? You know, what’s that look like? Or do you have a you know a phone center now, you got 25 people all day long texting people back. What’s that look like?

Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, so where we’re at um at our church, we started in October of 2022.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Kyle Isabelli — So now we’ve been doing this for about—today’s June 1st—we’ve been doing it, you know, eight, nine months. Um we average about 2 to 3 messages per week. Some weeks it’s less, some weeks it’s more. And out of those messages we get about a 50% response rate. So…

Rich Birch — Okay.

Kyle Isabelli — …if we text back right away saying, hey, this is who I am. I’m a pastor here in the western suburbs of Chicago. I’m a partner with He Gets Us. Thanks for reaching out. I hear this is what’s going on your life. Would you like to share more? We leave it at that. On the bottom of it it says like, hey this message comes from Avenue Christian Church., You can you can, you know, text n…

Rich Birch — Check them out or you…

Kyle Isabelli — …or text no to get out of opted out or whatever. And so about 50% of people do engage with us, um at least over texting. And I would say out of that 50% probably another half we’ve been able to have phone conversations, get connected in our church and have them start coming to some of our, you know, life groups or small groups at our church. Get them… Some people I’ve had to refer them to counseling, you know, and say, hey, let’s we have some we have some counseling services that we partner with in the area. This is something that’s probably above my pay grade…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Kyle Isabelli — …but let me let me help you out. It’s above my training, let me help you out and point you in the right direction.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Kyle Isabelli — So you know some people would look at that and say oh only 50% of people respond back to you. But these are people we would have never connected with in a million years had it not been for being a partner with Gloo and being ah a He Gets Us a partner.

Rich Birch — Um, and then how how is that working, so like you talked about the six is it 630 area code? Um…

Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, there’s three different area codes that kind of are generally within the Chicagoland area where we’re at…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Kyle Isabelli — …that we’ll we’ll get those coming to our feed I guess.

Rich Birch — And so obviously on the backend there’s a little bit of like ah like there’s obviously multiple churches in 630 or in those areas that are engaged. They’re doing something to root calls to, you know, various different churches. You have a sense of how that looks? And and is that are they scaling it based on the size of your church or how does that work?

Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, I don’t know how they scale it. My my guess from from my initial conversations and then also talking with a couple other churches in the past six months that are in this area is that it’s almost like a checklist.

Rich Birch — Sure.

So it’s just like all right, we sent this one to Avenue today and…

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kyle Isabelli — …and like I know Community Christian is another one and they, you know, they get the next one that comes up. And then the next one that comes up. and so I think it might just go on to rotation. I’m not 100% sure, but we’ve never myself and another staff person handle these initial contacts, and it’s never been like this overwhelming thing where like you said, there’s a call center now…

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Kyle Isabelli — …there’s 25 people, you know, time of thing. So um, yeah, so all I know is it’s based on area code.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Kyle Isabelli — It’s based on where they’re coming from. And and like getting capturing people’s information, you know, you get ah in a church setting to capture a first time visitor’s information is so hard some days, you know?

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so…

Kyle Isabelli — It takes them like six weeks…

Rich Birch — Oh, yeah, yeah.

Kyle Isabelli — …to finally a write down their email, you know? And now it’s like we get their phone number and email immediately before even having a conversation with them.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing. Like so if, you know, doing the math quickly, you know, there’ve been somewhere around 200 contacts, which is amazing. Like that’s if you if, you know, eight months a couple and a half, you know, two and a half a week um…

Kyle Isabelli — Yep.

Rich Birch — …you know, 50% of those you actually hear back from. So there’s like a hundred legit kind of conversations. They’re all legit…

Kyle Isabelli — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …but a hundred conversations you’ve been engaged with. And then, you know, some some people that you’ve actually and then other 50%, so you maybe moved 40, 50 people to actual phone conversations, which is you know, pretty amazing. Tell me what’s the size of your church? Like what’s the I’ve tried to get a sense of scale for people that are listening in.

Kyle Isabelli — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Because it would to your point to even even if you whittle it down to that 50, even if you say okay, the 50 who kind of followed the bottom of the the funnel, for a lack of better word. The people that you you know, actually end up getting on the phone, man a lot of churches would do a lot of work to get 50 contacts…

Kyle Isabelli — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …like that would be a tremendous amount. So yeah, give us a sense of that.

Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, I mean we’re we’re a church of about 400 on Sunday.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Kyle Isabelli — And you know, with you know people come in once or twice a month…

Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely.

Kyle Isabelli — …you know, probably more would call Avenue their home. But that’s our average attendance. So we’re a mid-sized church. So to to your point to have 50, 40 to 50 contexts, you know, 10 to 15% of our weekly attendance that we’re able to engage with people in the community, like I don’t know an outreach strategy, a digital outreach strategy that has that type of return on investment, if you want to put it in those terms. Like it’s it’s pretty remarkable. Um, and and such a blessing for for us to be a partner with them. So it it to me the the numbers, the math as we kind of broke it down, it just it makes a lot of sense. Especially because it’s something that they give to churches for free. Like that doesn’t cost us…

Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, you can’t beat the price.

Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, you can’t beat the price of that.

Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, and how much does all this cost? Well they give it to you.

Kyle Isabelli — Yes.

Rich Birch — So yeah, absolutely. Just to put that all in context context, friends. So a church of 400 people, you know, the industry average, the kind of ah thing that we would typically would love to see us driving towards from a first time guest contact information, that would average 8 a week. Like we should be seeing somewhere in that range typically. And I don’t know where where you guys are at, but when you even put it in that context, if you think three contacts a week are coming in on average through through the the internet that are above and beyond that, that’s a robust number, again, considering all the work that it does you have to do to to gather contact information from people who attend on a regular basis. That’s that’s incredible. So when you know the interesting thing, so did you see as the actual Super Bowl went through a spike? Did that was there a lot that week? Has it been pretty consistent? Yeah, give me a sense of, you know, as as it’s trickled on do you still get contacts? How’s that going?

Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, I would say Super Bowl saw a little bit of a spike. Um you know in Chicago in particular for most of the fall and then now this new baseball season ah, the Chicago Cubs and the Chicago White Sox they consistently have He Gets Us ads in their ballpark. So in Chicagoland it’s probably been more prevalent. I don’t know how that is compared to the rest of the country. So we didn’t see too much of a spike for Super Bowl and the weeks after because it had kind of been a part of everything we’re doing. Um, but I will say that um I just think about the dollar amount that goes into creating these ads.

Rich Birch — Oh yeah, that’s huge.

Kyle Isabelli — Like as ah as a church our size like we would never have the millions upon millions of dollars to to create these amazing amazing digital ads, get them advertised in multiple platforms. Like we don’t have the the team, the resources, we can’t do any of that. And so to have that type of resource and for your church just to be a benefit, ah it’s huge. And so it just it makes sense for any church anywhere to utilize it because people are on social media, people are on the internet, people are streaming, and these He Gets Us ads are everywhere. And so it’s it’s such a blessing to be a part of it. So yeah, so not too much of a spike when the two big ads did show. Um, but we, like I said, being in the area that we’re in we I think it’s been more consistent because it’s been here a lot longer.

Rich Birch — Interesting. Yeah, I think Chicagoland is one of Gloo’s—I’d have to look, but—one of their focus communities. Like they have a number of communities across the country that they’ve ah they’ve said hey we’re going to put disproportionate effort in, for sure, which makes sense. Yeah, that’s that’s fascinating. All right so.

Kyle Isabelli — Um, yeah.

Rich Birch — when you now are you able to, ah so you get the text and email you get their phone and email which is amazing. Um, have you put those into another follow-up sequence? Are you allowed to do that? What are the restrictions around that? Can you continue to, you know, be proactive? Obviously if Ppeople opt out then, you know, obviously you can’t keep going. But if if what what does all that look like?

Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, so Gloo, the the nice thing about Gloo is that um there is an actual online platform that you can utilize that your church signs up for. So all of their data is is stored in there. So if we want to do a phone call or send a text message, we can do it through Gloo obviously. But if we have something else going on in our church and they’ve opted into communicating with Avenue Christian Church, we’ll send that to them. You know, we can ask them, hey, we we send out a weekly email of our church… because some people even do um have reached out because He Gets Us started a campaign of saying like, hey, it’s time for you to come back to church. Pandemic’s over; start coming back to church. Do you need to find new church home? So we’ve had quite a few people have responded “looking for a church home”. That’s been their kind of one sentence prop. So um, we’ll we’ll put them in our database, you know.

Kyle Isabelli — And and Gloo ah, you can export it through Excel. So we can load it to our database which is you know CCB, Community Church Builder. And everything’s very seamless. If we want to use more of that data we can import it into our own database, but Gloo has a great online platform that makes it very simple to see everything, all the contacts, when’s the last time you’ve connected with them, what’s the last message that you’ve had with them, so on and so forth. So it it really is a one stop shop – their online platform.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s that’s fantastic. So what would be your advice, so I’m sure there’s church leaders that are listening in that are like, man, we’re missing the boat here. We should get involved. What would be ah, you know, beyond—and we’ll get to links and all that in a bit but—like what’ll be your advice for a church that’s maybe just starting? Or is there a piece of this that you wish you know back eight months ago, oh we should have done this differently when we got the ball rolling?

Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, I think um I think there are probably many churches like ours that coming out of the Super Bowl ad um, did a series based on like the He Gets Us ads. And that’s another um thing about the online platform is they have sermons and discussion questions that go with some of their ads. So for our Easter series, and it started palm Sunday went through Mother’s Day, we would show one of the He Gets Us ads as a as a bumper video, and then we would you know teach on that topic about Jesus and how it relates. And there are sermon outlines, guidelines that if, you know, you need to use you can utilize them.

Kyle Isabelli — So I think many churches probably started there and just kind of left it, like oh this is a cool thing. Let’s talk about it. Whereas I wish we would have done that in October so that by Christmas of 2022 we would have been really honing into saying like, here’s our promotion, here’s what we’re talking about and then a month later in February it just it continues on. You know, so it’s it’s continuing on people’s minds in our community. It’s on the mind of our church for them to say, oh yeah, our church was talking about this this this Christmas and this fall. And we’re starting to engage with people and and they’re sharing it on their social media and stuff like that. So I wish we would have done that before, but even still connecting with our Easter services, connecting it with some of our big, you know, Palm Sundays and Mother’s Day, continually following up with people in that regard.

Kyle Isabelli — We did a stations of the cross like prayer experience where we tied in the last week of Jesus to different those different videos and and different, you know, scriptures and different reflection questions that came from Gloo, like you can make it your own. But I wish we’ve just done that a little bit earlier. But it’s it’s not too late. Like you can still do it. He Gets Us is continuing to put out more ads and and they’re creating new things and more people are donating, so it’s still free. So I would say jump on and try to figure out how it can help your church’s community outreach moving forward.

Rich Birch — Yeah I love it. If you log on, again you just can can go to Gloo.us if you’re if you’re um, a church, you just log on create an account. It’s super easy. Super fast to do. But you’ll see in there in the He Gets Us resources there’s prayer prompts, sermon resources, reading plans, discussion guides – all kinds of content that even if you were not thinking about like even you’re like, I don’t know do I want to have somebody answering text messages. Even if you weren’t interested in that, man, there’s a great opportunity to leverage those resources. They’re well done, high quality. Um, yeah, that could be really really helpful.

Kyle Isabelli — Yep.

Rich Birch — So as you look to the future, how do you think this will shape your, you know, your church’s approach? You’re kind of, you know, where you go from here?

Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, I think it has reminded us of our need to engage in some of these tough conversations with people, to really get over the fact that maybe the church doesn’t have the best reputation overall.

Kyle Isabelli — And say, you know what, we’re gonna be a church that creates our own reputation in our community. And we’re gonna do that by caring for people’s needs, listening to them, helping them where they’re at. Um and through the through our conversations, through showing them the love of Christ like their hearts will be open to the gospel. Their hearts will be open to attending a church service, or coming to a program, or you know taking their next steps in their faith journey. Whatever it is this is getting us outside of our walls um and helping us understand and see even our own personal digital strategy has to be less about promotion of, hey this is what’s happening at our church, and here’s what we’re teaching on! And it needs to be more about like how are we helping people in our community meet their needs…

Rich Birch — Right.

Kyle Isabelli — …and and hit their pain points and and talk through the things that they’re going through. So it’s it’s really kind of flipped the script for us in a couple different ways and I think that’s going to continue to drive some of our outreach strategies moving forward.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s fantastic. This has been just a really, you know, great conversation. Is there any part of this that you look at or like yeah that just actually hasn’t been that great? Or it maybe hasn’t met your expectations or you know it kind of just is like maybe more not negative, but just a little, you know, maybe it just hasn’t been as fantastic as it sounds on this box, you know, kind of thing?

Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, um, the platform is easier to use on a phone than it is ah than it is on a computer or laptop.

Rich Birch — Okay, yeah.

Kyle Isabelli — Um, which is that that’s a small thing. And for me…

Rich Birch — Fascinating.

Kyle Isabelli — …as I was sharing earlier with with you, Rich, is that I’m not I don’t like being on like social media as much.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Kyle Isabelli — I’m not really into like having the apps on my phone; I would rather do it on a desktop. Um and just kind of put my phone away a lot of times, until the fact that it really is a lot easier to communicate with people on the phone versus the desktop. It’s a downside. If you’re fine using your phone, um, go for it. It’s not a big issue. But for me, there’s some kinks in there when it comes to the desktop version. So but that’s you know it’s such a minor detail. Otherwise it’s like ah, you know, I would say one more thing.

Kyle Isabelli — Some of the ads, you know they’re not always my favorite ads all right? Maybe I don’t fully agree with the message, or I don’t really like how they talked about Jesus in this way. Like sure that’s that’s going to happen. But that’s not the point of it. The point of it is that it’s connecting with someone who doesn’t know Jesus, or is far from Christ and it’s given you an opportunity to talk with them. So it doesn’t matter if I don’t fully agree or fully like the ad. Or you know you see a lot of hate that’s on social media over these last few months about He Gets Us. Like there’s so much more good and redemption that can come out of it, even if you don’t one ah hundred percent like the ad. So.

Rich Birch — Right.

Kyle Isabelli — I would those are two small things that’s like, oh could be a little bit better, but otherwise it’s it’s been such a great blessing for our church.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. Yeah, I wonder if um, there was you know there has been pushback on that side on the messaging side. And since you brought it up, I didn’t bring it up, um, you know, maybe just go into that a little bit more. Like it it it has been, you know, it’s an interesting time in our culture where, you know, the way I read that is, you know, if if this was 20, 30 years ago and ah Billy Graham was coming to town, they used to do a lot a lot of ads Billy Graham would, you know, they would do all kinds of ads to, you know, advertise. And you know, I I put it in that category of like you may not love all those ads; you might not love all of that, but at the end of the day you’re like, yeah, it’s Billy Graham though. It’s going to be okay, like it’ll all work out in the end. Um, that’s kind of how I read it was I was I’m like, yeah, I not sure I would have you know you know, but but but it doesn’t seem we live in such a polarized era that it’s like people get so worked up over stuff.

Kyle Isabelli — Yep.

Rich Birch — Um, yeah, maybe talk through that a little bit more. Is there anything else on that front that you know, kind of sticks out to you…

Kyle Isabelli — Absolutely.

Rich Birch — …um, you know, as you think about the, you know, at the at the actual messaging itself?

Kyle Isabelli — I would say that, you know, even in our church after we we shared about it and talked about it and then did the series, you had some people like, I didn’t really like that ad; I don’t agree with it. And or I don’t I’ll just be frank – I don’t like that certain companies are donating to Gloo and funding some of it.

Rich Birch — Right.

Kyle Isabelli — And I don’t like where their money’s coming from. And I don’t agree with their political stance on this company.

Rich Birch — Right.

Kyle Isabelli — And so it’s like I get it. And you can go down that rabbit trail with any type of nonprofit. You can go down that rabbit trail with any type of corporation that’s trying to do good in society. And so I said just look at how it benefits the local church, look at how it benefits the mission of of making disciples. We would never have these conversations with these people. They wouldn’t they wouldn’t give church a chance in million years apart from seeing an ad, sometimes at like one o’clock in the morning…

Rich Birch — Yes, yeah.

Kyle Isabelli — …because they’re discouraged and depressed and they don’t know what to do with their life. And this random ad showed up as they’re scrolling through social media. And now we get to have a conversation with them.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good.

Kyle Isabelli — Like we don’t get that we don’t get that if they didn’t see that He Gets Us ad. So let’s, you know, at our church we like to say—and I can’t remember who’s the, if it’s Francis of Assissi or someone else, but—our mantra is in the essentials we want to have unity, in the nonessentials liberty, and in all things love. And so our digitals outreach strategy to reach people in our community to me is a nonnessential.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Kyle Isabelli — So let’s have liberty. Let’s show grace to one another, and in all things let us show love to one another. So that, yes, I I get the point, but the the pros so much outweigh the benefits…

Rich Birch — Right.

Kyle Isabelli — …and we’re not forsaking the gospel message. We’re not watering down the gospel message. In fact, we’re getting an opportunity to clearly articulate the gospel…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Kyle Isabelli — …to these people who are in need.

Rich Birch — Yes, yeah. And yeah, that’s very well said. And you know, the other piece I would add to that is, you know, you got to look at the form. These are these are quick spots. They’re, you know, you talk about a Tiktok ad.

Kyle Isabelli — Yep.

Rich Birch — Like, man, I feel bad for people who are saying, hey we’re going to try to make a thing that’s like in 4 seconds it’s going to get people’s attention. Like good luck with that, dear pastors. I’m like you know you know, could you if you were restricted to ah to a sixty second thing on a Sunday morning ah, how would what would you do with it? You know, how would you do that? And so, you know, I think on balance, all the stuff I’ve seen, I haven’t watched it all but all the stuff I’ve seen and been like, man, that’s clever. It’s interesting it. And it does it it does what it’s supposed to do, which is move people to do exactly what you said is, hey, I’m struggling with my marriage. I’m, you know, I’m I got this issue, this is this is bugging me, and to reach out. And really then the ball’s in our court is to say, hey, we’re going to pick this ball up and and run with it. So yeah, love that. This has been fantastic. Anything else you want to share just as we wrap up today’s episode?

Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, once again, Rich, thanks for for having me on. And and I would just once again, encourage pastors and in churches go to Gloo.us G-L-O-O dot U-S and sign up. And become a free partner and start getting connected with people in your community who are hurting, who are in need, who are looking for hope, who are looking for healing. Like you have an opportunity to to take a step forward and reaching more people in community. So don’t waste the opportunity. Yeah.

Rich Birch — So good. Yeah, love it. Well this has been fantastic. Where do we want to send people online to track with the church or with you?

Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, our church’s website is avenuechristian.com. And then if people want more about me and my family and my life and my journey kyleisabelli.com that’s I-S-A-B-E-L-L-I.

Rich Birch — Love it. This has been fantastic. Thanks for being here today.

Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, thanks, Rich. Appreciate it.

The Art of Working with (Almost) Anyone: Michael Bungay Stanier Offers Coaching For You As You Lead At Your Church

Rich Birch — Thu, 20 Jul 2023 08:44:00 +0000

Thanks for joining the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with coach and writer Michael Bungay Stanier, who is best known for his book, The Coaching Habit, which is the bestselling coaching book of the century.

We all know that not all work relationships can be perfect, but how can we improve them? In today’s episode, Michael talks about his latest book How to Work with (Almost) Anyone: Five Questions for Building the Best Possible Relationships, and coaches us on how to improve our work relationships for the sake of our own fulfillment and leadership development, but also to bring out the best in others.

Getting guidance. // Staff relationships can be tough because people are messy and complicated. They have their own agendas and are doing their best, but they aren’t always aligned with each other. It’s easy to find guidance for being more productive and efficient in our work, but much harder to find guidance about how to cultivate the best possible working relationships.
Talk about how to work together. // Have a conversation with your colleague about how you’ll work together rather than just what you’re working on. Talk about how you can work best together and bring out the best in each other. Discuss these things so that you both have the best chance of enjoying the working relationship, and the best chance of the work being good.
Lead the conversation. // As the leader, you should work to develop at least a decent working relationship with everyone, even those you struggle with. Choose one individual and talk with them about how to improve your relationship. This conversation will require vulnerability and courage, but it is a powerful investment in your leadership.
Learn from the past. // Michael’s book offers five questions you can ask during a conversation with a colleague. One of them is, what can we learn from past frustrating relationships? What happened in the past will repeat in the future with different people, in a different situation. By openly discussing past frustrating relationships and learning from them, both parties can gain valuable insights on how to avoid triggering each other while improving the relationship.
Don’t surprise your staff. // Give your teammate clarity by letting them know ahead of time about the conversation you want to have. Tell them what to expect and what questions you want to talk about. Be ready to answer these questions yourself and model vulnerability. Then be present and listen to your coworker. Creating a safe environment during these conversations is crucial, as it allows people to be open and engaged.
Start with one. // Rather than trying to have conversations with everyone you work with, start with one person. Think about who would be most open to having a conversation about improving your working relationship. The very act of making the invitation to somebody is a powerful first step. They might be skeptical at first and change won’t happen overnight, but keep at it.

You can learn more about Michael’s book and get extra downloads at www.bestpossiblerelationship.com.

Thank You for Tuning In!

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 — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Super excited about today because we’ve got a really fantastic guest expert to help you and I with some real practical stuff in our organizations. We’ve got Michael Bungay Stanier. He is really best known for his book The Coaching Habit, which is a fantastic book. If you have not read that, give that to your team. You need to. It’s really is the bestselling—I didn’t know this—the bestselling coaching book of the century and is recognized as a classic. I found it super helpful. But in his most recent book, How to Work With (Almost) Anyone, shows how you and I can build the best possible relationship with key people at work. He’s a Rhodes Scholar, he’s Australian, and our friend Carey Nieuwhof said, Hey, you’ve got to have Michael on, and anything time Carey tells me do stuff, I say, yes. So super honored to have you, Michael. It’s an honor that you’re here with us today.

Michael Bungay Stanier — Oh, Rich, thank you. I mean, I love that Carey made the introduction, and I’m grateful for that indeed. And thanks for such a nice introduction. That’s really, really warm of you.

Rich Birch — Well, why don’t you fill out the picture? Like, what did I miss there? What are some things that you’d love for people to know?

Michael Bungay Stanier — Oh, gosh. Well, you know, I’ve got that kind of complicated backstory, you know, that saying, inspiration is when your path suddenly makes sense. So you go kind of a accumulation of adventures and stories and scars and mistakes, but you covered a lot of the basics. I’m Australian. I got lucky when I was in my mid 20s and I won a Rhoades Scholarship and that did two brilliant things for me.

Michael Bungay Stanier — One is it stopped me becoming a lawyer because I was doing a law degree and it wasn’t working going well. I mean, I literally finished my law school being sued by one of my professors for defamation. So I’m like, okay, that’s not great.

Rich Birch — Oh my goodness. [laughs]

Michael Bungay Stanier — And then I arrived at Oxford to study and I met my wife. We’ve been 30 years married now and she’s Canadian. So that’s part of the reason I’ve ended up living in Toronto. And I, you know, when I finally got out of school, I spent some time in the world of innovation and creativity. Amongst other things, I’ve helped invent a whisky that’s been called the worst single malt scotch ever invented.

Rich Birch — [laughs]

Michael Bungay Stanier — Um, I worked into the world of organizational change, so this is where I really got interested in how organizations flourish or don’t flourish. And then 20 years ago or so, I started a company that’s a training company to help organizations use coaching skills to help bring out the very best in their people and thrive as an organization that’s called Box of Crayons.

Michael Bungay Stanier — Um, but now I would say I’m trying to be a writer. So of all the things I do, in all the ways I teach, writing is perhaps my my most unique, most practical way. And so these days, I spend a lot of time going, All right…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Michael Bungay Stanier — …let me go through the misery of writing a book, and then the necessity of talking about the book and getting it out into the world. And that’s kind of how I see myself now.

Rich Birch — Love it. Well well, you know, I want to just thank you for The Coaching Habit. And so I read The Coaching Habit and to be honest, did not connect your name with that book until until Carey reached out to me and was like, Hey, there’s this guy. And I was like, Oh my goodness, I would love to get a chance to talk to Michael. That his book is a fantastic, super practical, you know, the kind of thing that you can put right into practice. And so I’m honored that you would come on…

Michael Bungay Stanier — Oh thanks.

Rich Birch — …and look forward to diving in. Your new book is called How to Work with (Almost) Anyone Five Questions for Building the Best Possible Work Relationships. I love in the write up I love this because this feels very true…

Michael Bungay Stanier — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …in the organizations I’ve led I’ve led. Not every relationship can be rainbows and unicorns and free flowing ginger beer. But man, that’s so true for us. We’re leading churches. Most of the people who are listening here, they’ve got a staff of 10, 15 people, something like that. And we know that those relationships are so it can be tough at times. Why is that? Why why doesn’t why don’t relationships just magically happen?

Michael Bungay Stanier — Oh I know.

Rich Birch — Why aren’t they rainbows, unicorns and free flowing ginger beer?

Michael Bungay Stanier — Because, you know, it’s people are messy and complicated and and and have their own agendas and are doing their best, but not everything is aligned. So you know, if you look back on the working relationships you’ve had, the ones you have now and the ones you’ve had in the past, my bet is it’s probably a bell curve. You know, you have some people at one end where you’re like, I love working with you. For some reason we’ve clicked and we bring out the best in each other and we navigate the hard times with some grace and some ease, and we kind of amplify the best of who we are.

Michael Bungay Stanier — My bet is probably you’ve had working relationships at the other end of the bell curve as well. Ah, you’re like, ah, It’s not even that they’re a terrible person. I mean, sometimes they’re a terrible person, but not always. Sometimes it’s like we just can’t click. We’ve got sand in the gears and lots of the work in relationships somewhere in the middle, which is like they’re fine and sometimes they’re a bit off and sometimes they’re a bit on… I realize that we get stuff done through people.

Rich Birch — So true.

Michael Bungay Stanier — We find the joy in our work, through the people with whom we work. And whereas, we’ve all got guidance on how to do the work better, be more productive, be more strategic, be more efficient, be all of that. There’s less guidance on how do we actively manage and bring out give us the best possible chance of the best possible working relationships.

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s so good. You know, I love that distinction of, you know, there’s a lot of resources out there that are around the getting stuff done.

Michael Bungay Stanier — Right.

Rich Birch — It’s the whole how do we you know, but but what are we doing to try to build up the relational stuff? Now, I want to take advantage of the fact that you’re here. You’ve structured this book around five questions.

Michael Bungay Stanier — Yes, yep.

Rich Birch — I want to help our listeners and cut right to the chase. There’s got to be one of them that is like the one that that you found in your conversations and your research that’s the highest leverage. I know that’s an unfair question to an author, but let’s let’s start there.

Michael Bungay Stanier — Well, I’m going to start I’m going to start I’m going to shed what I think is probably the question, if I can only ask one of those five questions. This is the question that I would ask.

Michael Bungay Stanier — But the key if there’s one message I would hope people heard in this conversation between you and me, Rich, it’s have a conversation about how you’re going to work together rather than just on what you’re working on. And and the pull is always on the what because it’s always there and shiny and loud and urgent and bright, but it’s like taking a beat and kind of looking the other person in the eye and saying, Hey, how will we work best together? How will we bring out the best in each other?

Rich Birch — Can you frame that up for us? What do you mean by that? How like, what does that look like?

Michael Bungay Stanier — So we didn’t do this, but we could have done this before you hit record on this podcast, I could have said, Rich, tell me what makes a really great podcast guest for you. I mean, what do they do and what do they say, and what do they not do and what do they not say?

Rich Birch — Sure.

Michael Bungay Stanier — And I could have said and tell me tell me like the terrible guest or at least the ones where, you know, at the end of it, you’re like, you put your head in your hands and go, Oh, man, that was hard work. And I’m not even sure I’m going to release that episode because it just didn’t work. And I could say to you, Rich, let me tell you, when I’ve been interviewed, the interviews that I love, the ones that really bring out the best in me. And then let me tell you about the interviews that are less fun for me, ones that I’m not so enamored. And you and I have a conversation. We’re not we’re not talking about what I’m going to talk about. We’re talking about how will you and I work best together. And you can do that with all the key relationships in your in your church or in your organization, the people on your team, maybe the key people in your parish or in your flock. The ones like these are key people who need to work well with. Maybe it’s like vendors and so people who support the work that you do in your church or your organization. You can build better working relationships with those people, but it requires a conversation where you go, Hey, you and me, I don’t want this to suck.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Michael Bungay Stanier — What should I do to make it not suck? What should I do to make it even better?

Rich Birch — Right.

Michael Bungay Stanier — And whether you pick any one of the five questions that we can talk about specifically and use that as a springboard, you can. But really to take away this idea of just checking in with that other person going, how should we do this…

Rich Birch — Right.

Michael Bungay Stanier — …so that we give it give both of us the best chance of enjoying the working relationship, which gives both of us the best chance of the work being good.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. Help us help you understand, maybe and we’ll get to one of those questions in a second.

Michael Bungay Stanier — Yeah.

Rich Birch — But as we’re kind of thinking about it from a conceptual point of view, help me understand, maybe there’s people on my team that I when you describe the bell curve, I very quickly went to the people that were on the bottom end of that bell curve.

Michael Bungay Stanier — Right.

Rich Birch — Like you did not have to convince me. Oh my goodness. This is these people are not working.

Michael Bungay Stanier — Right. Yeah.

Rich Birch — How do we frame that kind of conversation? How do we how do we approach that one? Maybe I’m not even I don’t even really I want to keep it at the transactional because it is so negative. You know, help us think through that.

Michael Bungay Stanier — Well, you always have a choice. You have a choice whether this is worth it or not. Because you may say, look, there are some relationships where I just don’t want to do this because I just want to I want to limit it. I want to keep it transactional. But I know that when I’ve led teams, actually I haven’t really had that choice. I’m like, I need this to be better because this is sucking the life out of me. It’s miserable for both of us, and I want to give this the best chance of not turning into something magical and brilliant, because I think that’s unlikely. I want a bad relationship to get to being good enough. I want to remove as much of the negative as possible. So at a minimum, we’ve got a decent working relationship and we give ourselves the best chance to cooperate because, you know, you have to I mean, maybe you need to let this person go or fire them or whatever. Maybe that’s the solution. But sometimes you’re like, I need to give this a better shot. Or for some reason I don’t have the I don’t have the option of firing them. So we’ve got to figure out a way of working well together.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that.

Michael Bungay Stanier — And I think that’s the conversation where I’m like, okay, Rich, I know we’ve had our struggle with working together. And I’d like to do all we can to try and make this just as good as we can get it. So let’s just pause for a moment and this is have a conversation about how should we do that.

Rich Birch — I love that.

Michael Bungay Stanier — There is risk involved here. Like there’s this is an act of vulnerability. This is an act of courage to do this. And it won’t always work, but it will work often enough. And what you are exhibiting as you show this leadership is powerful for not just the two of you, but also for other people watching on, that it is often a really bold, good investment in your leadership.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. I love the, you know, the courageous conversation that needs to happen there…

Michael Bungay Stanier — Yes.

Rich Birch — …that it’s like, hey, we’ve got to take we’re the leader. It’s our job to lead, to go ahead. And sometimes even just acknowledging, I found that in the past, acknowledging with people, hey, like we both can see this isn’t working well, right? Like, can we talk about that? Like, you know, that wow, what a powerful even just that alone could get us farther down the field. I love that. Well, let’s dive into one of these questions.

Michael Bungay Stanier — Sure. Yeah.

Rich Birch — What if we let’s let’s unpack one of those, you know, pretend we’re sitting across the table trying to coach a leader. What’s one of these conversations that could be particularly helpful for us?

Michael Bungay Stanier — I had this with The Coaching Habit because, you know, The Coaching Habit‘s…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Michael Bungay Stanier — …is like, here are seven great questions. And I’m always asked, What’s your favorite question? I’m like, Oh man, I like all of them.

Rich Birch Yes. [laughs]

Michael Bungay Stanier — I literally I literally wrote a version of the coaching habit, which I had 169 questions. And then I…

Rich Birch — Love it.

Michael Bungay Stanier — …and it was a terrible book. I mean, it was a terrible version. So like, I have to get fewer questions. So…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Michael Bungay Stanier — …took it down to seven. So all of them have their place. But um I would, oh, what would I pick? I would perhaps pick this one.

Michael Bungay Stanier — Yes.

Michael Bungay Stanier — I picked the bad date question. It’s question number four of the five, and it says this, What can we learn from past frustrating relationships? Because what is true is what happened in the past will repeat in the future. Even though the past is with different people and different contexts and different moments and you’re a different person. All of that is true, but the patterns repeat. So if I could if I were sitting down with you and I go, Rich, we’re working together. I’m excited about it. You’re a nice guy. You’ve got a cool beard. I’ve got a cool beard. Things are looking good here.

Rich Birch — Sure.

Michael Bungay Stanier —But I’m like, Tell me about it. Tell me when you’ve worked with somebody like me in the position that I’m working with you in, and it just it’s not been good. It’s been a struggle. It’s been really hard. Tell me about it. What what did you do and not do and say and not say that really made that work in relationship struggle? And I’ll tell you the same. And this is such a gift for me because I’m like, okay, I’m getting some really good clues about how not to trigger Rich, how not to drive him nuts, how not to accidentally make him crazy. And he’s getting the same information from me. And so often what we do is we we project or we guess or we assume what it takes to make the person happy and how to avoid them being unhappy. And now I’m just saying, why don’t we say that out loud rather than just making it up about that other person?

Michael Bungay Stanier — And it is… so for instance, I mean, little things. If I go if you say, look, the thing that kills me is the is feedback that is always wafty high level positive and never gives me any of the details. I’m like, Oh, that’s really good. Because actually I tend to go for the kind of the pastorly huggy light [inaudible], woo woo, you’re amazing. And sometimes I forget to kind of go, Here’s where I’d love you to improve. I can, I can do that now. I’ve got a note: with Rich I’ve got to get gritty with my feedback.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Okay, I love that. So the when we’re thinking… so let’s stick with this, this whole bad date question.

Michael Bungay Stanier — Yeah.

Rich Birch — What what can we learn from past, you know, frustrating relationships? I think that’s a really great question. When as I’m going to do this, as I so let’s say I’m thinking about going to a leader. I’m going to have this conversation. I’m imagine, is this the kind of thing I want to prep them ahead of time? Like say, Hey, I’d love to have this conversation, here’s a bit of framework. Maybe I tack it on to the end of a one on one.

Michael Bungay Stanier — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Or do I just bring it on them and, you know, talk us through what that looks like? How do we actually have that to maximize it, to kind of get the best value out of it?

Michael Bungay Stanier — Yeah. Again, you always have a choice so you can decide what works for you. But I would say for the people on your team and the people who are kind of the closest to you, the most vital relationships, the more warning you can give them and the more clarity that you can give them, the the safer this conversation is going to feel for them. You know, in The Coaching Habit, I talk about the neuroscience of engagement and, you know, just there’s a quick detour five times a second. The brain is going, is it safe here or is it dangerous, safe or dangerous, safe or dangerous? And there are four drivers that make a conversation feel safe for people. And it spells the word tera, T-E-R-A.

Michael Bungay Stanier — And they are tribe, expectation, rank and autonomy. So tribe, the brain is going, are you with me or are you against me? Expectation is, do I know what’s going to happen or do I not know? Rank is are you more or less important than me? And autonomy is are you making other choices or do I get some say in this? That’s what the brain is going and going. Here’s how I tell whether it’s safe or dangerous. And of course, if it’s safe, they’re more likely to step forward, be vulnerable, be nuanced about the situation, see the best. If it’s dangerous, they’re retreating, they’re backing away. Everything’s a bit black and white. Everything’s a bit fight or flight.

Michael Bungay Stanier — So you’re constantly as a leader looking to try and lift the tera quotient because it makes it safer for all of you, which makes it more likely that you can bring their best and you can build a relationship that feels safe and vital and repairable with that person. All of that to say if you can say to them, Hey, Rich, this is a bit unusual, but I’d love us to have a conversation about how we how we are working together or how we will work together rather than just, you know, the projects that we’re working on at the moment. I’ve got five questions. I read it in a book.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Michael Bungay Stanier — And I’m going to do some thinking about how I’m going to answer the questions. I’d love you to do some thinking too. So we’re both prepared for the conversation and then we can both dive into it. And then when you jump in there, so what you’re really helping there with the E – expectation around that.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Michael Bungay Stanier — There’s also a rank thing, which is like, I’m going to ask and answer this question. So we’re both going to be doing it, not just me asking you. And then when you can start the conversation off, you might say, Hey Rich, thanks for doing this. I really appreciate it. Bit nervous and excited as well. Um, do you want to go first or should I?

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. That’s a good tip.

Michael Bungay Stanier — What that’s doing is lifting it’s tribes and autonomy. In that moment, you’ve just bumped up both of those things. And if they want to go first, fantastic. That’s wonderful.

Rich Birch — Right.

Michael Bungay Stanier — You’re like, great. And your job is you don’t have to fix anything. Job is just to be present and listen. But if if they ask you to go first, which I think they will most often because they’re kind of going, I don’t know – what are we doing? Trying to get you.

Rich Birch — Yes. They’re trying to get you… right.

Michael Bungay Stanier — I need to see what I need to see what the game what game is being played here so I can get a sense of it.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Michael Bungay Stanier — Then your choice is to role model vulnerability.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Bungay Stanier — So the more you are willing to share and be open and be real and maybe be a bit messy about how you answer these questions, the extent that you go is the extent that they will go. So you set the standard by which what’s permitted around vulnerability and openness and and humanness, really. So you get that choice around it. If you if you give top level, abstract, not giving, not I’m not sharing much there.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Michael Bungay Stanier — That’s exactly the same type of answer you’ll get from that other person.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. So one of the stereotypes [inaudible] be a lot of people listening in in our world that are called executive pastors.

Michael Bungay Stanier — Yeah.

Rich Birch — And like these people are typically not the lead pastor of the church, but they’re, you know, they’re kind of responsible—it would be similar like a COO—responsible for the kind of day to day management. And there’s a stereotype – I know this is not any of you that are listening in…

Michael Bungay Stanier — The other ones. The other executive pastors.

Rich Birch — …but there’s other ones, the other executive pastors, there’s a stereotype that that we can be just very transactional, and not necessarily transformational. We’re not like because we manage the budget, we manage, you know, all of that stuff. And there may even be leaders who are listening in that are self-aware enough to say, you know what, I actually think I am too transactional. I think I am too I am that guy who’s just too concerned about, are you checking your stuff off? And they want to take a step towards this kind of relationship. They want to and but they understand that the expectations on the other side are like, this is like way out of left field. Coach us through how we could make that kind of how do we change? Let’s say we’re convinced we want to make that change. We want to be more transformational, we want to help. We want to be more of a coach. How can I step to, you know, step towards our people in a way that’s better?

Michael Bungay Stanier — Well, I perhaps would start not stepping towards your people, but step towards a person. Um…

Rich Birch — Oh good.

Michael Bungay Stanier — …because it’s it’s a… sometimes these books, it’s same with The Coaching Habit as well, people are like, Oh man, I’ve got to change everything. I’ve got to stay curious longer. I’ve got to become more coach like. And it can feel a bit overwhelming because it’s not a it’s not a insignificant ask. It’s like I’m trying to shift the way that I show up as a leader and as a human being. Be more curious about that other person. Be willing to share the spotlight with them. Be willing to invite them in. Be willing for them to take responsibility and accountability that’s appropriate for them. These are non-trivial shifts in behavior and shifts in how you see yourself. So give yourself the grace to know that this won’t be an immediate transformation and won’t happen overnight. But start somewhere.

Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.

Michael Bungay Stanier — The very act of making the invitation to somebody is a powerful first step. Feel free to go, they might be skeptical at first. Nobody saw this coming from me.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Michael Bungay Stanier — Like, yeah, that’s okay. They’ll be skeptical. My job is to keep at it. Um, and I would select your person from 1 or 2 different pools.

Rich Birch – Okay.

Michael Bungay Stanier — Probably I would start with like if I if you had to guess who the person who would be most open to this. In other words, it would be safest for you and easiest to practice something new with that person be. Start with one person. You might not even start with somebody who’s part of your church.

Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.

Michael Bungay Stanier — You may go, I’m going to practice with a vendor.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Michael Bungay Stanier — You know, the person who provides the things that we need.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Michael Bungay Stanier — I want that. Some of those you want to be transactional relationships, but some of them are more important than that. And you might like, how do I be a better how do we have a better collaborative partnership?

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Michael Bungay Stanier — Like you’re practicing kind of in a safe area, but you might also go, look, I’ve got a couple of disastrous working relationships. You know, they feel really broken. Why don’t you could start there because you’re like, honestly, there’s not a whole lot to lose, you know?

Rich Birch — Right. Yeah.

Michael Bungay Stanier — If this doesn’t work, it’ll be exactly the same as it currently is.

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Michael Bungay Stanier — So that might also be a safe place for you to, to give it a go. Because if it does work well, what a transformation that could make.

Rich Birch — Cool. Yeah. So let me describe another scenario and maybe you could help, you know, help leaders who might be listening in, you know, apply some of this to this particular scenario. So oftentimes, if I’m at a church, it’s not all the time, but if I’m at a church doing some coaching, we’re working on some some issues. You know, one of two conversations happens. This is pretty typical. I’ll have a lead pastor – so they’re typically the person that’s in charge of the organization. They’re like the primary communicator. And they’ll pull me aside and say, you know, I just I really love my executive pastor. This person does a great job. They’re like so good at getting stuff done. Then they rattle off all this positive stuff. But then you know what happens. There’s a BUT at the end of the sentence.

Michael Bungay Stanier — Yeah, exactly.

Rich Birch — And they’re like, But can you help me work better with this person? Or, the reversal happened and executive pastor will say, Man, I love my lead pastor. They’re like all vision. I love their teaching. They’re fantastic. But help me understand… Can you talk us through the kind of leading up scenario? How how could I take some of the lessons here when I’m the person that’s not actually the primary; I’m you know, I’m reporting to someone else. How can I work better with that person?

Michael Bungay Stanier — Yeah, it’s really good. Um, so if I was you in that position, I might do a couple I might think of a couple of things. One is, I want to help people understand the dynamic that’s going on because it is lead and executive together, and those people with their individual personalities. But there’s a pattern that’s playing out that is beyond just who they are as individuals. And the the model I go to most often is called the Cartman Drama Triangle.

Michael Bungay Stanier — And the Cartman Drama Triangle says there are when things get dysfunctional and they always get dysfunctional, three roles play out: the rescuer, the victim and the persecutor. Victim is, Oh, it’s too hard. It’s unfair. Nyah, nyah, nyah. Kind of like, Save me. The the persecutor is wingle-waggler. You’re no good, micromanager. And the rescuer is, Hey, let me jump in. Let me fix it. Let me solve it. Let me take all of this on. And those are all very. And my bad is when you’ve got those dysfunctional relationships, there will be a pattern going on. And it’s really helpful to say, here’s the drama triangle. What pattern do you think showing up? What role do you think you’re playing? What role do you think the other person is playing? And that and then go, Now how might you break out of that drama triangle? That’s already a great start.

Rich Birch — Good. Yeah, I love that.

Michael Bungay Stanier — You know, just going I’m understanding this at a different level. And it’s not just me versus them. It’s a dynamic.

Rich Birch — Right.

Michael Bungay Stanier — But then you make the danger if you’re the coach is you become the rescuer, and you actually maintain this dysfunctional relationship by going, Oh, I know they sound terrible. Tell me all about it. Oh, my goodness. What can you do about it? You actually keep them in their kind of victim frustrated role rather than help them get out of it. So one of the things you could teach them is this idea of this Keystone conversation, which is like, what what what would be… you know, any time you give somebody a choice, Rich, I always say, what are the prizes and punishments? Because every choice is prizes and punishments.

Michael Bungay Stanier — If you were to have a conversation about how you’re working together, what are the prizes and punishments of that? What’s at risk of you doing that? Oh, they won’t like me. Oh, it won’t work. Oh, nothing will change. Oh, we’ll just keep things the way it is. And what are the possible prizes of that? Well, we shift everything. We clear up this this misunderstanding and reset and get back to who we are at our very best. And and have that conversation and go, what do you think? Are the prizes and punishments worth it? Because if you choose not to have that conversation, if you choose not to actively manage that, there are prizes and punishments to that choice as well.

Rich Birch — Right. Love it. Well let’s talk about…

Michael Bungay Stanier — I don’t know what what landed for you in that.

Rich Birch — Well, the thing that landed, well well, that triangle makes a lot of sense. And I think the that idea of being the rescuer in the midst of the scenario that actually just propagate it’s continue keeps it going.

Michael Bungay Stanier — Yeah.

Rich Birch — I think there’s there I think one of the dangers of what we do in our world is, um, we can shy away from some of these, you know, pointed conversations…

Michael Bungay Stanier — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …because, you know, we’re afraid of whatever insert whatever the particular punishment we’re worried about. But what ends up happening is we cultivate a whole other set of problems, which is, you know, it’s gossip. It’s, you know, it’s we’re thinking negative things. We’re, you know, we’re perpetuating negative habits, you know, all of that. So, yeah, I think there’s there’s something to just pulling back and having the, hey, let’s actually just have the conversation, define the relationship. Let’s talk about where we’re at. I think it’s so important.

Michael Bungay Stanier — Because the coaching conversation for me is, when I’m working one-on-one with somebody, is what’s your role in this mess? Because the temptation is to look at the other person and go, Tell me about what that what they’re like. They sound terrible. Oh, I get it. Oh, man, that must be hard. And I’m like, That’s kind of interesting. But all we can control and all I can coach is you. And so what’s your role in this? And the drama triangle helps them articulate their role, because rescuer, victim or persecutor, they’re all dysfunctional roles. They’re all kind of perpetuating the stuckness in some way. And then it’s like, what choices do you have to shift this? Because if you want this to be different, be the person who has the courage to say, How do I make this different?

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. When I was reading the materials about your book, one of the things that struck me was, Man, this would be a great resource for teams of people to read together, that I think getting it, you know, I’ve got ten people, hey, this would be a great resource maybe for the fall or maybe even over the summertime. I know it comes out here in the summer as like a a good way to introduce this topic to the culture. It will spur that conversation. Is that what you were thinking when you when you pulled this one together? Tell me about kind of what was in your mind when you were writing this book.

Michael Bungay Stanier — You know, um, I hope, I mean, I would be thrilled for teams to pick this up and go, This will help us build a stronger team. And also, I think I’ve written this primarily for people to build trust and safety, and vitality, and repairability. Those are the three characteristics I talk about are the best possible relationship. Is it safe, vital, and repairable – to build that one at a time. One one conversation, one person at a time. So if I’m a team leader, I want that there to be safety and vitality within the team itself. I want it to be, you know, you always hope a team is more than the sum of its parts. But I also want to take responsibility for my 1 to 1 relationships within that team, because I think by building that safety 1 to 1, you then start building the safety for the team to be amplified as well.

Rich Birch — Yeah. I love, you know, kudos to you, Michael. Even in this conversation you have you’re living out your the message of this book. You have pushed me back multiple times to, yeah, yeah, stop ignoring everybody. Stop thinking about everybody. Come back to that one relationship. Let’s go back to one thing, if we can, let’s have that conversation, which I think is a great thing for us to think about. I think sometimes we can just get so caught in the like, okay, we’ve got all this is like a mass of people as opposed to, well, let’s actually just have one of these conversations. If people want…

Michael Bungay Stanier — Those interventions happen all the way, right?

Rich Birch — Yep.

Michael Bungay Stanier — You want intervention 1 to 1. You want to think about your intervention as a team. And if you’re holding an organization, you know, the ten or the 15 of you, you’re like, you’re thinking the culture of your organization and the values of your organization as well. You’re trying to build a place where important work gets done and people thrive, and you kind of need to be working at all three of those levels. If you’re at that, if you’ve got that control and you’ve got that influence.

Rich Birch — Love it. Well, where can people pick up copies of this book? I want to make sure that they it comes out at the end of June 2023, if I remember correctly.

Michael Bungay Stanier — That’s right – June 27th.

Rich Birch — Okay, perfect. So you can pre-order now, I’m assuming at Amazon. Are there are other places we want to send them.

Michael Bungay Stanier — Well, it is true that you’ll find the books and all those obvious places where you buy books.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Michael Bungay Stanier — But if you want bonuses and extra downloads and kind of additional stuff, bestpossiblerelationship.com is a website where there’s a ton of kind of free stuff, including me role modeling what a keystone in conversation looks like. So you can come and see me having a keystone conversation with actually somebody on my team. It was a real conversation that we filmed and kind of want to share with people so you can actually see what this looks like and sounds like in real life.

Rich Birch — Love it. This is this is such a fantastic resource. And friends, I would highly recommend that you pick up copies of this, that you at least get a copy for you. And you know, but maybe for some other folks and you. I do think this is going to be the kind of resource that’s going to help so many of us think through these these relationships. Anything else you’d like to share, Michael, just as we wrap up today’s conversation?

Michael Bungay Stanier — You know, I’d probably just summarize some of what we’ve already said, and you’ve been a really gracious host, so thank you, Rich. You know, I think every working relationship can be better. And I think you can do that by having a conversation about how we work together rather than what we work on, because it’s a way that you connect to the humanity of the other person as well as discuss what’s important in the work.

Rich Birch — Thank you so much. Well, this is great. Anywhere else we want to send people online. So again, that’s best working relationship possible.

Michael Bungay Stanier — Best possible possible.

Rich Birch — Sorry.

Michael Bungay Stanier — It’s alright.

Rich Birch — Best possible relationship. I want to send people there. Anywhere else we want to send them online to track with you and to track with the work you’re up to?

Michael Bungay Stanier — No, my, my, my general website is mbs.works. But you know what you’ll get if best possible relationship is a doorway into all of that as well. So if you’re just remembering one URL bestpossiblerelationship.com is it.

Rich Birch — Great. And we’ll link to all that in the show notes. So…

Michael Bungay Stanier — Yeah, appreciate that.

Rich Birch — Appreciate you, Michael. Thank you so much for being here today.

Michael Bungay Stanier — It was great.

Rich Birch — Thank you, brother.

Michael Bungay Stanier — Thank you.

Rich Birch — Take care. Bye.

When Pastors Aren’t Angels: Becca Pountney on Wedding Industry Challenges

Rich Birch — Thu, 06 Jul 2023 08:44:00 +0000

Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today I’m talking with Becca Pountney, the UK’s number one wedding business marketing expert and host of the podcast Wedding Pros Who Are Ready to Grow.

Did you know that many wedding professionals have a negative perception of church weddings? From difficulty accessing church buildings and strict rules, to grumpy ministry staff and poor communication, it’s no wonder that wedding pros would prefer to steer clear of church weddings. But what if there’s a way to change this perception? Listen as Becca shares solutions to working with wedding professionals, and encourages church leaders to look at weddings as a way to serve those who might not otherwise come into a church.

Churches are still a place for weddings. // When Becca surveyed her audience about holding weddings in churches, the first response she got was that churches are still a place where people should get married. A couple may not attend church regularly or only go at Christmas, but many still want to get married in a church and are interested in Bible readings and even Christian songs. On the flip side, however, working with churches can be a huge challenge which turns people off to having a church wedding.
Shift your mindset. // It’s easy to think that couples from the community who want a church wedding only care about the pretty building or location, not what’s happening in the church. But Becca challenges church leaders to shift their mindset. Each year about 22% of weddings in the US happening in religious buildings; that’s over 300,000 weddings annually that could take place in a church. Think about how to use these opportunities to serve the community and demonstrate to people that the church is a welcoming place. Aim to be accommodating, whether it’s to wedding professionals, the bride and groom, or the guests. Many may never have come into a church before, so show them Jesus.
Communicate expectations. // When a wedding is held at hotels or other locations, the wedding professionals typically have had a lot of communication with the venue to make arrangements. But when working with a church, sometimes wedding pros are expected to show up the day of the wedding and figure everything out for themselves. Be sure to communicate expectations or restrictions ahead of time so that wedding pros can adapt as needed. Be ready to answer questions and have a point person available for phone calls.
Think about details. // Similarly to how you try to welcome and serve visitors during weekend church services, build a volunteer team that could serve during a wedding. Volunteers can help with parking, offer tea or coffee, welcome guests, provide directions to bathrooms, and much more. In addition, coordinate with the florists, photographers, musicians, etc. to get an understanding of what these people need.
Be clear about the rules. // Make sure the couple and the parties working with them know the restrictions you have in your church. Explain the reasons for your rules so everyone knows why they are in place. Offer people solutions rather than objections.
Get to know the couple. // When a couple who doesn’t attend your church approaches you about a having their wedding there, see it as the exciting opportunity that it is. Meet with them and get to know them. Ask questions about why they are interested in being married at the church. You can even offer a simple pre-marriage course such as the free one created by Alpha. If you are officiating the wedding, pray about how you can communicate the gospel during that time.
Spread the word. // If you are ready to open up your church to weddings in the community and use it as a ministry, network to find out who are the wedding pros in your area. Host an event to showcase what happens when people get married in your church. Visit local wedding shows and introduce yourself to people.

You can learn more about Becca Pountney at her website beccapountney.com as well as read her most popular blog post on five great Bible readings to use at church weddings. Plus, learn more about Alpha’s free pre-marriage course.

Thank You for Tuning In!

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 — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. You know, every week we try to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you. And today is no exception. I’m super excited to have my friend, Becca Pountney, with us. She is the UK’s number one wedding business marketing expert. She really helps them build a network of wedding industry contacts, and she provides all kinds of great advice around marketing strategy. And she has a bunch of business training. She’s been featured on places like BBC, Huffington Post, the Herald & Post, and now unSeminary – that just fits, just rolls off the tongue. Uh, she also has her own podcast called “Wedding Pros Who Are Ready to Grow”. Becca, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.

Becca Pountney — Thanks for having me, Rich. It’s an absolute pleasure.

Rich Birch — Yeah, this is gonna be fun. Now, people might be saying, wait a second, this is a little different than a normal, uh, podcast, which is exactly right. But why don’t, before we get into what we’re talking about today, kind of give me a bit of your background. Tell us a little bit about, you know, your business, tell us about, you know, what you do, who you help, all that kind of stuff. Fill in that picture.

Becca Pountney — Yeah, absolutely. So my background’s actually in television and radio marketing. And I worked in that industry in live TV for a few years. And then I got married, and wanted to start a family. And I decided that the television and radio industry just wasn’t conducive to any of those things because I wanted to be there for my kids. I wanted to see my husband and the hours were crazy. So I jumped across, started a wedding videography business so that I could work it around my kids. And I started a networking group because I’m big on building relationships, building connections. So I set up a little group in my area to start networking with other wedding professionals, and inviting them along. And very quickly it became apparent that they were asking me a lot about sales and marketing because that was what my background was in, in the television and radio.

Becca Pountney — And I found that I could just spend a few minutes with people and really help elevate their business. And they said to me, it’s really different because most people keep secrets back. They don’t wanna share, they don’t wanna help us grow. And I was like, I don’t understand that. I want like a rising tide raises all ships. Let’s all help each other. And so that’s how it started, really. And I started very local, just helping people with their social media, helping them with their visibility. And over time it’s grown. I now have a wedding blog for couples, all about planning their wedding. I have wedding industry courses, my podcast membership, and, and it’s just my heart really to see people grow in their businesses and realize that they can do something that fits around their family, around their kids, and still be successful.

Rich Birch — Love it. Well, um, friends, Becca and I are in a coaching group with a guy by the name of Chris Ducker. He was on the podcast, actually about a year ago. Uh, and we got talking, uh, about our kind of shared background. And there’s this interesting kind of overlap between, uh, what we do in the church world trying to, uh, serve our communities, and what Becca does with her people in, you know, weddings. And so we just kind of stumbled on this thing and I was like, wait, I just learned something new. You know, they, they talk about the Jahari window, right? There’s that like you, it’s like a whole area of thing you did not know. And then all of a sudden, you know it. Now you see it everywhere. And, uh, and she shared with me this fact, that apparently, and I want you to kind of flesh this out for us, apparently folks in the wedding planning wedding kind of industry, they look at you and I, friends, church leaders, in non-favorable light. How about we say it that way? Tell, tell us about this. What, what this, this kind of shocked me. And then, and then I, as I thought about it more, I was like, oh, maybe it shouldn’t actually shock me. But I wanna talk about this today and we wanna ultimately move towards solutions. But, but tell me about it. What, when you’re talking to other wedding planning pros, people about your, uh, you know about working with church leaders, what do they say?

Becca Pountney — Okay, so this is something that’s really close to my heart because it breaks my heart every time I hear people speaking about the church. So I’m a Christian, I became a Christian at 18. Um, I love Jesus, and I go to church. And when I talk to people in my industry about their experience of church as a wedding professional, it’s incredibly negative, and often even they might not even realize I’m a Christian yet and they’re just talking openly about their experience. And they’ll say things like, I just hate having weddings at churches. I wish I never got booked for weddings at churches. And because of my interest in the area, I often dig a little bit deeper into that conversation and try and understand well why? Like, why are you so anti-church weddings? So after me and you got chatting, Rich, I posted in my group. So I have a group, um, of just under a thousand wedding professionals and I just posed the question, tell me what you think about church weddings.

Rich Birch — Oh, good.

Becca Pountney — To just get some insight.

Rich Birch — Oh yeah. This is good. Juicy insight. Yes, absolutely.

Becca Pountney — So here’s some juicy stuff because this is direct from the wedding professionals. So the first comment was interesting to me because the first person said, I think churches are a place where people should get married. So there’s obviously that kind of undertone that people still see church, and marriage, and weddings as the same thing, like traditional. So they’d say things like, oh, I don’t actually go to church, or I only go at Christmas, but I definitely wanted to get married in a church. So that was kind of insight one. Okay, people still link, you know, Christianity, church, together with weddings. Then came the hard-hitting stuff and I’m gonna share it as it is, and then we’re gonna gonna find the solutions afterwards.

Becca Pountney — So people had lots of complaints around the access to church buildings, not being able to park, not being able to get into the buildings. Photographers turning up last because they’ve been taking photos at the “getting ready” situation. They’ve turned up at the church, there’s nowhere for them to park, and then they’re late. Uh, we had people talking about the amount of rules surrounding church weddings. So they say as soon as they see church wedding, they see rules. So many rules, they can’t do this, they can’t do that. Whereas when they’re getting married in a hotel, there’s not so many rules. And they see church rules combined. Uh, grumpy Vicars, grumpy pastors was huge on the list. So, which again, it just, these things hurt my heart, like to hear it. Just, I’m like, no, this is not what we wanna hear. So turning up to weddings, people being rude to them, people saying, we don’t like you kind of people cuz you’re annoying when you’re taking photos of the wedding.

Becca Pountney — One awful story where the vicar made the photographer sit outside for the duration of the ceremony in the snow because he did not trust her not to take a photo during the ceremony.

Rich Birch — Oh my goodness.

Becca Pountney — And poor communication. So, so many sad negative things surrounding this. And I thought, okay, I can see this now. I can see why you are saying to me we don’t like church weddings because they’ve equated all of these negative things with being booked for a church wedding. And we know that that doesn’t need to be the experience, but that is what’s happening out there.

Rich Birch — Wow. Yeah, so that’s, so I love how you broke that down. Obviously the practical thing, the, um, rules, grumpy pastors, poor communication. Um, now it’s funny, this was the same experience I had when we talked where I was like, initially I was like, on behalf of all my dear listeners, I was like, defensive. I was like, no, that can’t be the case. But then I paused very quickly and I was like, oh no, I can see this, this, I can see why this happens. Like I can, I can see it from the, you know, the, the church side. You know, I think there, this can be one of those places where we intersect with people who don’t normally attend church. And although our, like our intentions might be good, what actually rolls out is not that, uh, not that helpful. Can we zero in on those last two grumpy pastors and poor communication, particularly. Cuz I feel like those man, we could, we could cover a lot of ground there. Talk us, talk to us about those, what, you know, what were the kinds of things people were experiencing, you know, in around those issues?

Becca Pountney — So one thing around poor communication is that when they turn up to a wedding at a hotel, at a registry office, often the suppliers have had a lot of contact with those places ahead of time. So maybe the venue people have reached out, they expect to see their insurance certificates, and they have conversations about the venue, how it works, all of those kind of things. It seems to be when they have a church wedding that they’re just expected to turn up on the day, and then find those things out for themselves. So there’s definitely a gap there where there’s just not that same level of expectation because wedding professionals, you know, they understand whatever building they’re in, in, whether it’s a listed building, whether it’s a hotel, whether it’s a church, there’s gonna be different restrictions, different things that are gonna come up, but they’re willing to adapt to if they can know that back and forth.

Becca Pountney — So I think that was one of the big things. The second one was a along the grumpy pastors scenario.

Rich Birch — Sure.

Becca Pountney — I think I understand it, right, because all of these people are coming in and I think it’s easy for us to have a mindset of, oh, these people are just coming here to get married in a church, and they don’t really care about what’s going on in the church; they just want the pretty building. And we’re kind of looking at that with the wrong head space. And so I think sometimes that can reflect because, you know, we know that couples can be demanding; they can have ridiculous expectations. They can want us to work and, they wanna do their rehearsal at a certain time of day and it doesn’t fit in with us. And so we can come to the, the table in a bit of a negative head space. And I hope what we get out of today, and what I wanna encourage people who are listening to is to, let’s stop thinking about the, the difficulties of these things, but let’s flip it around and realize this is an incredibly exciting opportunity. And we should be using these events, these weddings, these things are, are bringing people into our church for good and we should be excited about them.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. Uh, you know, even that, and, and I, we are gonna get to some solutions here friends, so don’t worry, we’re not just gonna keep picking this scab. Uh, but you know, on the communication piece, that’s like one of those, uh, in lots of or or lots of the churches that are listening in on the weekends, they’re trying to do things to frame the experience for people who are not normally here. You know, we’re, we’re trying to figure out what we can do to ensure that people feel comfortable. But I can see where, man, if we just put a little bit of work into, even just putting together like a one or two page PDF that just kind of talked about, Hey, this is how, this is how our building works, here is where the bathrooms are. You know, here is the, you know, those kinds of things, man, that could go a long way.

Rich Birch — And, and you know, this is where, and this is what I love about you, you’re such a positive, you know, future-oriented, you wanna make things better person, which is great. But to me, I, I listen, listened to this and I thought, man, wouldn’t it be amazing if the people who are listening to this podcast got the reputation in their town—cuz it seems like this is like industry wide—wouldn’t it be amazing if they were the people that got the reputation in their town of being like, you know, I don’t really like all those other churches, but that one church man, they’re amazing. Like they’re, and and it became actually a referral source. It became like, Hey, I’m gonna actually point wedding pros are actually gonna point people towards, uh, your church. So maybe let’s pivot into solutions a little bit. What, what are some of the things… I’m gonna leverage the fact that you’re the pro. Help us understand what can we do better to serve wedding pros as they engage with our ministries?

Becca Pountney — Okay. So the first thing is we need to understand the size and the excitement of the opportunity and we need to be praying into that. So so I grabbed some statistics before this call because I just love having some numbers to understand the size of the opportunity. So in the media, you will hear all the time, church weddings are in decline. And that is true. The trend is that church weddings are going down, however, there’s still a lot of them happening. So here in the UK, 18% of weddings are happening in church buildings. Now in the UK that’s 39,945 church weddings happening a year.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Becca Pountney — Now, if we imagine for a second that on the conservative side, 50 guests are coming to that wedding, right? That’s just shy of 2 million people entering a church building…

Rich Birch — Wow.

Becca Pountney — …in a calendar year to come to a wedding. Now, if we look at the US, which is obviously a huge, hugely bigger market. So we know that 22% of weddings in the US happen in a religious building. So even if we say, okay, some of them might be other religions, let’s take 15% as coming into a church. That’s 345,000 church weddings in a year. Which means, again, a conservative estimate of 50 people coming into the building, that’s 17 million people coming to into a church building for a wedding every year. This is an incredibly…

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s huge.

Becca Pountney — …exciting opportunity and we need to be thinking like, we need to be praying that people wanna come into our church building, that they wanna have their weddings here, and how can we use that as an opportunity to show them Jesus, and to show them that we’re a welcoming place, that we’re a great place to be.

Becca Pountney — So that’s the first thing I think people to do…

Rich Birch — Love it.

Becca Pountney — …is just kinda understand how exciting this is. And it, it is exciting. When I got married myself way back in 2010, I knew it was one of the only opportunities I was really gonna have to invite all of my friends and family into a church building, to have them sit down, be there, because they, they love me and my now husband. But also listen to someone preaching, singing the songs, like doing all of the things. And I knew this is exciting. I need to make the most of this opportunity, and make sure everyone who comes to my wedding leaves feeling joyful and knowing that church is a good place.

Rich Birch — Yeah. I love that. That’s, that’s a massive, I would’ve, if you would’ve asked me what, you know, what is the numbers, I would’ve never guessed they were that high. I would’ve never guessed, man. But it’s true. And, and I think fifties shy, like that’s, that’s a low number,. You know, cuz I, you would know what, what’s the average wedding size, say in the UK? What is the average, you know, that people are having at a reception or whatever?

Becca Pountney — Yeah. Usually between 80 and 150 guests.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Becca Pountney — So 50 is on the conservative side.

Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s amazing. That’s incredible. And you know, there’s obviously, there’s probably two ways to look at this, or there’s prob probably more than two ways to look at this, but, you know, there are the, the bride and the groom, and like the, the wedding pro. And if there’s musicians, there’s like the people that are the closest, the tight group that you’re, that you’re gonna interact with as a church. But then there’s also just the guests in general. What, what do you think we could be doing from a solutions point of view to try to serve those groups, to try to turn around this, uh, negative perception that’s out there?

Becca Pountney — Okay, so the first thing is that we need to make sure we are welcoming and accommodating to everybody from day dot…So just as we would for your Christmas services, your Easter services, your Sunday services, like have people around welcoming people. Maybe you can offer a car park attendant that can help people park. Maybe you’ve got a representative from the church on the door, or offering to serve tea and coffee. Like be super welcoming because people are coming into your space and your building. And if we were going into a hotel, we would expect the reception staff, the bar staff, everyone to be on board with the wedding day. So it’s no different in a church. So that first moment that the bride and groom come through the doors, the pros come through the doors, and every single guest that’s coming to that wedding, they should have an incredible welcome. And they should feel part of that building.

Becca Pountney — So that’s my first thing. And then be really accommodating to people. So understanding that people don’t understand church, right? So we need to make sure that things are well signed, that there’s understanding of whether they can use the bathroom. Do they have to stand up for the songs? Like be really, really accommodating to people. Because it’s maybe the first time they’ve ever stepped foot in a church, and for many people it may be the first, and possibly last, time they come into your church building.

Rich Birch — I love that. So I love this idea of, you know, go out of our way to be more welcoming, um, you know, and even to, you know, find a volunteer group that could help with this, this or could be paid people or whatever. But if, uh, a team of people to help with these, you know, these things. I, yeah, that’s a, to me is a great opportunity. There for sure are people in all of our churches who love weddings. There for sure is that group of people that, um, would be willing to say, you know what, I, you know, it might end up being a dozen times if you’re a really busy location. It might be a dozen, it might be 20 times a year you’re giving up, uh, you know, a Saturday, part of a weekend to come and to help serve.

Rich Birch — It doesn’t necessarily need to be you, pastor or vicar, if I happen to be in the UK, um, you know, to, to serve there. But what a great way to get people, uh, engaged. Now, when you think about this, um, ac accommodation piece, drill into this a little bit more. What would you say some of the, uh, the tight spots where, you know, maybe photographers are pushing back or people are like, ah, what they just, they’re, they treat their building with too much, they’re too pristine, they’re too, you know, they’re, they’re, they’re just, they’re, they treat it too much with kid, kid gloves. What would be some of those things we should be thinking about where we could be more accommodating, going out of our way?

Becca Pountney — Yeah, so when it comes to working with the professionals who are coming into the building, first of all, speak to the couple and find out who they’re inviting along. So have they got a photographer? Have they got a videographer? Are they getting a florist involved? Like, find out all the information upfront. They’ll be able to tell you that information and get an understanding about what those people need. Do they need access to the building, or when are they coming in? All of those kind of things. So again, communication is key. We need to understand that first of all. Then I would recommend having some conversations with some of the key suppliers, or at least offering to have those conversations.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Becca Pountney — So, hey, you, you got a photographer? Like, here’s my, here’s the details of our pastor or our wedding team, or whoever it is. And, uh, we’d love to chat beforehand about the logistics, get in touch, let’s have a quick call, and we can talk these things through. So the, the photographer, the videographer, feels part of it already. They, they feel like, wow, these people really care. They wanna make the experience good for me. And then in that conversation we can identify some of these tight spots. So we mentioned at the beginning a very simple one is parking. So if you know your photographer or your videographer has gotta rush in last minute, they’ve gotta get the shots that under pressure, their stressed. Like, can we just reserve them a parking space? Can we stick a cone in a car park? Can we tell them ahead of time…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Becca Pountney — …this is the photographer’s parking space because they need to get there and then they need to make a quick getaway at the end as well. So it’s things like that, if we have these conversations and understand the requirements. Do we need, you know, is there gonna be a florist in our building for eight hours? Is there someone there that can bring them a cup of tea or have a chat with them or, you know, it’s the basic things. There’s so many opportunities.

Becca Pountney — And then the final thing as well on helping these pros is talking about expectations. So there may be some things around being in the church or things that you expect as a church that you wanna portray to these people. So explain to them, if, if you don’t want people taking photos during the service, make sure the couple and the photographer know that upfront and make accommodations for it. Explain to them how it works in your setup. But also, I would also challenge you as you’re listening to think, why do we have some of these rules in place and do we need them?

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Becca Pountney — Like, are, are they actually rules we need, or have we just built rules upon rules upon rules because they’ve been in, in the, in the church rule book for forever.

Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s a great question. Like, I think, you know, I think there’s a lot of people who we wouldn’t, we don’t treat our buildings like they’re magical places. Like they’re, they’re a tool that God’s given us to use. Uh, but you know, sometimes these things, they take on an extra weight because it’s a, a religious building. It’s like, you know, I remember when I was in, uh, student ministry when I first started out in, in ministry, I didn’t know that there was a rule that you’re not supposed to have confetti at the church. This is like a thing, you know, weddings, no confetti. And so, um, we did a New Year’s Eve party and I had like a whole bunch of confetti and I knew it was gonna be a mess. I was like, listen, I know this thing’s gonna be a mess. And, uh, so I, and I, so I had planned for it. We’re gonna like get all this stuff cleaned. It’s gonna take a long time, but we’re gonna get cleaned.

Rich Birch — But man, I got like, my hand slapped big time, like, man, it was like you did the wrong thing. And you know, it takes on an extra weight. And I was like an employee of the church. I was like the youth pastor. Um, and I felt dumb about that. Like, I was like, oh, I, I can’t believe that. And it takes, it takes on an extra weight. I think we might forget that as church leaders, that when we’re criticizing or explaining a rule like that, there’s something about the fact that it’s a church building, it feels like, oh, that’s, it’s not just like I’m renting some hall where they said no confetti. It feels like, oh, now I’ve done something terrible because I did this in, uh, in the church. And so be conscious of that. And I think it’s okay to have those. Maybe talk us through, if you are, if you’re a church leader and you have a rule like that, like say no confetti, how do we have that conversation in a way and to not come across as a jerk, beyond being beyond saying, don’t be a jerk, but what, what can we do to try to explain that to people?

Becca Pountney — Okay. So let’s go with the confetti one, cuz that comes up a lot. So just explain your reasons behind it. So as a church, we don’t really like having confetti because it blows over the neighbors. It’s bad for the environment, whatever your reasons are. But then give them solutions. So say to them, you know, what’s worked well before is we have dried flowers and dried flower confetti’s better for the environment. It’s better for the, you know, when it blows over, it, it looks beautiful in the photos. We are more than happy for you to use that kind of confetti. If you want any recommendations, here’s someone that we’ve known that’s done it before.

Oh that’s good.

Give people solutions rather than objections. Or say to them, you know, we don’t wanna have confetti outside the front of the church building, however, you know, there’s this great green space just round the back. We’re more than happy for you to do it there. If you want us to show it, it looks great in photos. So just explain to people if there’s a rule, why the rule’s in place. And then try and find something to overcome it with.

Rich Birch — Yeah. I love that. So a anything else on the solution side? I would say kind of on the defensive, like responding to. And then I wanna ask you the proactive questions. So how, what can we do to actually try to, you know, leverage this opportunity?

Becca Pountney — So one more thing I wanna talk about when it comes to solutions is thinking about the couple itself. So we’ve talked about professionals, we’ve talked about people coming in to the church as a guest, but what about the couple? Because they’re the people that we’re gonna have the most interaction with, potentially as a church leader. So first of all, if someone approaches you about getting married in the church, try not to in like straight away judge them and think, oh, they just wanna use my building. Think, okay, there must be something that’s made them think they would like to get married in a church. And as I said at the beginning, people still equate church and marriage together. I think a really interesting thing is I have a wedding blog and we talk about everything to do with weddings. It’s not a Christian wedding blog, it is just a wedding blog in the UK. Do you know what my best performing blog post is? Every single month and every single year.

Rich Birch — No.

Becca Pountney — It is this: the five bible readings for your church wedding. Every month, every year. My best performing blog post on my wedding blog in the UK is five Bible readings for your church wedding. Again, that tells us something. People are interested in Christianity and church when it comes to their wedding date. So if you have a couple approach you, again, see it as an exciting opportunity. Meet with them, get to know them, talk to them, find out about their background, find out about why they’ve decided that your place would be a good place to get married. And then think about how you can work with them and build a relationship with them over time.

Becca Pountney — So I’ve known some churches who do great things with the marriage course. So they don’t make it a requirement for someone getting married in their church, but they suggest it. They say, we do this great course, you know, before you get married you can come, you can meet with a, an another couple in our church, you’ll get dinner, you can sit down, you go through this marriage course and it’s a great preparation for your wedding day. And I’ve had friends here in the UK who’ve, who’ve gone through that. They’re not church people, but they’ve got married in a church and they loved it because they had that experience that, you know, as church members, church leaders, we get used to hospitality. We get used to people cooking us meals and serving meals up in the church, but lots of people are not used to that. So if someone says…

Rich Birch — No, it’s so true.

Becca Pountney — …like, we’re gonna cook you a lovely dinner, we’re gonna help you with your marriage and we’re gonna talk you through this marriage course. Like that’s an exciting opportunity…

Rich Birch — It’s a huge deal.

Becca Pountney — …and they love, it. So…

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Becca Pountney — So really think about that.

Rich Birch — Friends, if you’re looking for a resource on that. Uh, our friends at Alpha, they do it. They do, it’s called, they actually do two of them. One’s called the marriage course and then the other is they have one actually literally targeted, the pre-marriage course. Uh, the pre-marriage course is only five sessions long. It’s really easy. It’s free for you to do as a church. The videos are amazing. Um, they’ve, it’s a layup. It’s available in like a whole bunch of different languages. Like, it, it really is a layup for you if you’re looking to add that to your game. And again, you know, I know you know this, friends, but you know, this doesn’t mean that you necessarily need to do this. You could get a volunteer in your church to put this together, put together a small team and say, Hey, um, you know, we’re gonna offer this pre-marriage course.

Rich Birch — Um, is there, uh, so I love that five Bible readings. I, I, so first of all, that tees up exactly where I was going to next, which is how do we see this as a, as an opportunity, really rather than just being defensive and like, Hey, let’s make sure we get the right PDFs and, and get the cone out and all that. So we do the right stuff. What should we be… because I think there’s a, there’s a real opportunity here for us to reach out to our communities. Give us a sense of if you were to coach a church around how we could leverage this, maybe try to be more attractive to say, Hey, we’re looking for church or weddings to come to our church. What are some of the things we should be thinking about?

Becca Pountney — Okay. So in the wedding service itself, if you are giving a message in that service, you need to really think that through, and really pray it through as well. Like this for me is one of the biggest opportunities. So I talked about my own wedding, and one of the things that I thought was, this may be the only gospel message some of these people ever hear.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Becca Pountney — And so we actually booked an evangelist for our wedding to come and speak…

Rich Birch — Love it.

Becca Pountney — …who was a really great speaker. We spoke, we spoke to him about, you know, we want you to give a great message, we want you to give a clear message, but we want you to give a message that is really inclusive for people to hear, isn’t too long, is, is exciting for people to hear and he really like, he really gave a great message. And if you are getting the, the joy, the benefit, the privilege of, of speaking at someone’s wedding that you may not know very well. Like pray it through and really remember the opportunity that you’ve got. So that’s one thing. Definitely think about the message. Um, also, I just wanted to talk as well on, you know, these people coming into your church, remember they might not understand church. So there’s an opportunity with helping them through these Bible readings. Which Bible readings should they have and why, and what do they mean? And talk them through that process. Song choices is huge, right? We go to weddings and they have the same five songs at every wedding that they sang in assembly at school, because they don’t know any other church songs. But actually why don’t we share some songs with them?

Becca Pountney — I had a work colleague a few years ago get married and he was getting married in a church. He came to me, he said, Becca, we need some help with song choices. We’re thinking “All Things Bright and Beautiful”. Do you have anything else? And I’m like, please, let’s find something else. I’ve put them together a Spotify playlist of songs like “In Christ Alone” and “Amazing Grace” that they didn’t know. And they were like, wow, these songs are amazing. And they had “In Christ Alone” at their wedding while they signed the register. You know, these tiny little opportunities to just understand and talk people through are huge.

Becca Pountney — In terms of attracting people into your, into your church building, understanding that it’s a place where people can get married, like network, find out who the wedding professionals are in your area. Maybe invite them in, like have a little event where you showcase like a hotel would, like what happens that you getting married in our church. Talk to, talk to local vendors. Talk to local people and, and find out what’s going on in your area. Put information out there about getting married in a church. Write a blog post for a wedding blog about the opportunity of getting married in your church. Like do all of the things that you would do in any other area of church life, but with a focus on people getting married.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Like I see these wedding shows, so it’s been a while since I’ve been married. I see these like wedding shows. Like they’ll be at like the Holiday Inn on a weekend and they’ll be like, uh, is that the kind of thing like as a church leader, should I be going to that, maybe a chance to, you know, interact with some of the vendors there, even just pick up a bunch of business cards? What if I was trying to get our name out there or should I get a booth at that thing, or tell me about that.

Becca Pountney — I love wedding shows because it is an opportunity to be like hands-on in the wedding industry and talk to people. So you shouldn’t a hundred percent go and visit some of your local wedding shows. So just go around, talk to people, make friends, find out what’s going on in the area and talk some about your church. Because exactly as you said earlier, Rich, wouldn’t it be great if your church was the place where everyone’s like, you have to go get married there because it’s so welcoming, so friendly and so forward thinking. Getting a booth, I would love nothing more than to walk into the national wedding show here in the UK and see a church with a booth talking about the marriage course, talking about like giving advice on church weddings, talking to people about how to pick songs, how to pick bible readings, giving them advice and talking to them about it.

Becca Pountney — The other thing is, um, working with vendors on things like photo shoots. So one thing that wedding vendors have to do a lot is work together and create photo shoots. And just this last week actually someone in my members group said, does anyone know a church that where we could do a photo shoot? Do you think they would let us question mark? And so again, if you are a place that’s saying, look, hey…

Rich Birch — Yeah, come on in.

Becca Pountney — …our building empty on a Wednesday lunchtime, if you wanna come in, take some photos, you know, set up a wedding, like, please come on in. Use the building, we’d more than welcome that.

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s a great idea. I love that. Even being proactive with those other, you know, cuz there’d be people like florists and stuff like that, that are gonna try to show and they’re looking for a place. And this, you know, this actually reminds me of my own wedding. We, there was like this side room that if you were, if you just kind of walked into the place we got married, you would not know it was there. But it was like this beautiful spot. It’s got this like stained glass and all this really cool, and we got these really cool pictures in there. Uh, but you know, if the person who was hosting us hadn’t kind of gone outta their way and said, Hey, we also have this place over here. I don’t know, the photographer wouldn’t have known, they’d never done a a thing there. I wouldn’t have known, we wouldn’t have known. So even tried to proactively think like, oh, this is a great place, you know, if there’s places around your building, uh, you know, to, to do this.

Rich Birch — I also think this is one of those areas where frankly, uh, if you’ve got an older church building, um, you have a real advantage over some of us that do churches in like the big gray box, which is mostly the kind of churches I’ve led in. And so we typically, you know, it’s not like it doesn’t look that nice. It looks more like a, you know, a concert hall than it does, uh, you know, a church. But it’s a real opportunity for you to leverage that and say like, Hey, here’s, here’s a cool spot you could use. It does look traditional. It looks like the wedding in, uh, in, uh, you know, in the movies or whatever. Uh, that is so cool.

Rich Birch — Well, this has been a great conversation. Anything else you’d like to, to share? Anything else you want us kind of as we start to wrap up today’s episode?

Becca Pountney — I just wanna encourage you, if you’re listening to this, to just really pray through and think about this opportunity. Because it’s easy to dismiss these couples, but every single couple that’s approaching you about getting married has their own story and they’re worth spending some time with. So every time someone messages you about getting married in your church building, try and change your perspective and think, okay, God’s led these people to me. What are we gonna do with this?

Rich Birch — Yeah. That is so good, Becca, I really appreciate that. Thank you for your encouragement. Thank you for your, uh, your kind and gentle coaching today, Becca. You’re, you’re helping tons, thousands of church leaders do this better. So I really, really appreciate that. Where do we wanna send people online uh, if they wanna track with you, kind of see, you know, get to know you more, uh, get a sense of what you’re up to?

Becca Pountney — So you can go and check out my wedding blog, vicinityweddings.co uk. If you wanna write a blog post about your church building and why people should come get married there, please do. I would more than welcome it. We know that that content does well on the blog. Or go and check me out @beccapountney.com.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it so much. This is good. Now, there might be people that are listening in, uh, who they may know people in the wedding industry. What are the kinds of people that, you know, they’re, there’s a lot of church leaders listening in that, that may, uh, that, that they should be pointing towards you? Like maybe they’ve got photographers or they’ve got people in their church. What, what are the kinds of people that, that kind of track with you?

Becca Pountney — Yes, please send people my way. Anyone who’s got a business in wedding floristry, cake making, stationary design, DJs, wedding venues, basically anyone that puts together the wedding day, please feel free to send them my way. And, um, yeah, I’d love to work with them and encourage them to understand why church weddings are not that bad after all.

Rich Birch — Love it. Well, thanks so much for being here, Becca. I appreciate your, uh, your leadership and your support. And, friends, uh, thank hopefully today’s been encouraging for you and you’ve given you some ideas to think about, uh, as we go to, as we move forward and try to serve the communities around us. So thanks a lot, Becca. Appreciate you being here today.

Becca Pountney — Thanks for having me.

Long-Term Leadership: Jeff Cranston on Steady, Purposeful Leadership

Rich Birch — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 08:44:00 +0000

Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Today we have Lead Pastor Jeff Cranston with us from LowCountry Community Church in Bluffton, South Carolina.

How can churches maintain balance in ministry and create engagement within their congregation and staff? This is a question that Jeff answers in today’s episode of the unSeminary Podcast. Don’t miss this conversation where we talk about focusing on the purposes of the church, teaching systematic theology in an understandable way, and how to increase collaboration and avoid silos in your ministries.

Stay balanced. // LowCountry Community Church had been around since the mid-90s, but when they found themselves faltering at one point, they rallied around the five purpose-driven church principles. The five principles LowCountry articulates are to connect people to God and each other, grow in your faith, serve other people and God, reach, and worship. Churches tend to have a stronger leaning in some of these areas than others so focusing on all five can help you stay balanced.
Create engagement. // As part of their discipleship process, the church has also implemented core classes that focus on each of these five principles. People who are new to LowCountry are encouraged to first take the Connect class, which consists of attending a Sunday service together, meeting and hearing from the staff, and then sharing lunch. The goal is to have everyone coming out of the Connect class take a next step. LowCountry has found that they have a very high retention rate through this assimilation process.
Kitchen Table Theology podcast. // Another aspect of discipleship at LowCountry includes the Kitchen Table Theology podcast. After seeing a rise in biblical illiteracy, including among younger people the church wanted to bring on staff, Jeff realized that most people weren’t familiar with the bible or what Jesus was teaching. Through his podcast, Jeff aims to teach systematic theology in an understandable way, making it accessible to everyone. He says it’s like sitting at a kitchen table, having a cup of coffee, and chatting about theology in a casual way.
Remember your mission. // As a church grows, it’s critical to keep the staff aligned and focused on the mission on a regular basis. Talk with your staff to remind them why you’re doing what you’re doing.
Stay connected to staff health. // LowCountry has also been intentional the last few years about staff health. They partnered with Best Christian Workplaces to do a survey among the staff which focuses on eight key components. The survey provides some hard numbers so you know exactly how your staff feels about the church environment and culture. While it can be difficult to face what needs to be corrected in the workplace, it gives your staff a voice and is helpful for creating a healthier team environment.
Create a culture code. // Another way LowCountry has given the staff a voice is by developing a culture code together. Bringing everyone to the table to craft this document has created engagement, combatted ministry silos, and invited collaboration across different ministry areas, which ultimately benefits the whole church. Once a year the staff walks through the five components, which keeps the staff rowing in the same direction. The five components are courageous pioneers, loyal to one another, work hard and play hard, joyously collaborative, and steadfastly committed to growth.

You can learn more about LowCountry Community Church at www.lowcountrycc.org. Plus listen to Kitchen Table Theology with Jeff Cranston, and download LowCountry Community Church’s Culture Code document here.

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Episode Transcript

Rich Birch — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Super excited for today’s conversation today. We’ve got Jeff Cranston with us. He is at LowCountry Community Church in Bluffton, South Carolina – pumped to have this conversation. For folks that don’t know ah ah, LowCountry started, I believe in 1994; Jeff’s been there 20+ years. He’s the published author of a number of book and also hosts a podcast, so I know he’s going to have good audio, Kitchen Table Theology. Jeff, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.

Jeff Cranston — Rich, thank you very much. It’s an honor to be on with you today.

Rich Birch — Yeah, so honored that you would take time out. Kind of fill out the picture there – tell us about LowCountry Community. Give us a sense of the the church. You know that kind of thing.

Jeff Cranston — Yeah, we’re nondenominational, evangelical church started in 1994 um and got off to a pretty good start, and then sort of faltered. And my wife and family, we came in ’99 and it was ah it was really a restart. There there was a great core group of people of about eighty folks with with some good DNA of of caring for people, of ah wanting to reach the community. And so we we just started over again, hit the hit the reset button. And the elders at the time were they they saw the need for it and were patient with me. I was a lot younger then, and but yeah, we’ll be here on ah, we’ll be here in June of this year twenty four years.

Rich Birch — That’s great.

Jeff Cranston — But it’s just grown very steadily. Um, we we just have plodded along, Rich. There’s never been any real tremendous spikes in attendance. It’s it’s been a steady climb. Ah but yeah I’m a believer in, you know, slow and steady does win the race most of the time.

Rich Birch — Absolutely.

Jeff Cranston — And it it’s required a lot of patience so, I can assure you. Because there’s a lot of times I wanted to go a whole lot quicker than it did.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. A friend a good friend of mine in Omaha at Stonebridge ah Christian Church there, Mark Chitwood, he jokes that he says, hey our church is the slowest growing church in America ah, they just have been consistently, you know, in a very similar trajectory just every year little bit more. But it’s amazing over that time you see just incredible growth. And I actually think, man, that’s healthier, that’s in some ways easier to manage. Just love that.

Rich Birch — So you know, if I understand correctly your church you know when you started you were kind of sub 100, somewhere in that range. Today you’re the church is 2000 plus, somewhere in there. That’s that’s amazing growth to see over that timeframe. I wonder if if we could talk a little bit about that. What, you know, you talk about the church was faltering was a bit of a restart. Maybe rewind the clock a little bit in your brain. What was it that, when you thought, you know, in the restart, what were some of those things that need to be addressed? How did, you know, how did those, you know, how and how does how could that impact us today as we’re thinking about our churches?

Jeff Cranston — Yeah, I think the heart of the people they they really wanted to reach out to the community. And we were on Hilton Head Island. The church was originally called The Church at Hilton Head. And for those who don’t know Hilton Head is just off the coast of South Carolina. It’s a it’s ah it’s a high-end destination vacation type place. And it’s ah it’s a pretty difficult place to do ministry. But there were some wonderful people there. And our county—very unusual for the south—our county is around 90 to 91% unchurched…

Rich Birch — Wow!

Jeff Cranston — …so it’s a target rich environment, if if you want to do church.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jeff Cranston — And they wanted to do church a little bit differently and more contemporary, and so we we sort of rallied around the concept of the Purpose Driven Church principles – the five the five principles -because I think it was all there. And and actually the founding verses of the church were Matthew 22:37-39 and Matthew 28 – the great commission. And they happen to also be the the key component verses for Purpose Driven Church. And all we really did with that was take the five purposes and make them our own. But I really do think there’s a there’s a lot of genius in that, and you do see those five purposes in the new testament church.

Jeff Cranston — So we we call them connect, and you know just connect people to God with the gospel, connect people to each other. And then grow in your faith, serve other people, serve God. Ah reach—that’s evangelism—and and worship. And we’ve just tried to work those five. And what I found is most churches and most pastors, if you just allow yourself to go into default mode, you automatically fall into one or two, maybe three of those five.

Rich Birch — Oh that’s a good insight.

Jeff Cranston — But another two or three will sort of be ignored. You you know in the back your mind, we ought to be doing more in evangelism, or we ought to be do be doing more and helping our people to serve, but we never quite get around to it. And so those five things really gently forced us to stay balanced. And all you have to do is just look back at your year and go, okay were were we all grow this year, were was everything geared to grow? Which in my experience, most churches are geared to grow and to worship. Evangelism gets talked about, but it rarely gets done.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeff Cranston — Ah getting people to serve, that’s always an issue. Ah and then connecting people is sometimes an afterthought…

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Jeff Cranston — …in terms of assimilation and things like that. We we expect people to visit our churches but we we have no expectations of ourselves to follow up with them, and help them plug in. So those 5 things have really helped us to stay focused, on task, balanced, healthy, and healthy things grow.

Rich Birch — Yes, yes. It’s just true.

Jeff Cranston — I mean it’s just a fact of life. If you’re a plant or a baby, it’s just true. And the same thing’s true in church.

Rich Birch — Yeah, so what does that look like? So I love that, first of all. I think that’s you know that’s ah, a really good overview, and and look at you know those five areas. Um, what does that look like from your point of view when how how do you keep the church focused on those five areas. How do you keep your team, and your volunteers, and your programming, and ensure that you’re not off balance, that you’re not, you know… Or or is it okay in some seasons to be kind of more focused on one than the other, but on whole you’re trying to keep to all five? Talk us through that. How do you keep us focused on that?

Jeff Cranston — When we were smaller, I tried to find a volunteer champion for each one of those five.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Jeff Cranston — So okay, your job as ah as a high capacity volunteer is helping new people to connect. I’ll take care of the gospel part, and training people to evangelize and things like that, and we’ll proclaim the gospel from the in our teaching and so forth, but can you help people to to connect to the church? And then somebody else, can you help people to grow in their faith? And um, you know and when I was a solo pastor is helping them do that, then as we grew we staffed specifically for those five purposes. And now that you know we’ve got 30-some on staff now, ah all those areas are are well covered.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeff Cranston — And so that’s how that’s how we have done it. And you know we the things you think are most important and the things you value, you will put your horsepower behind, you will put your finances behind. And and so we we have just done it that way and make sure that the folks who are leading the charge in those areas have have what they need to do it well. And and we we still talk about it 24 years later. We still you know I look back, and my executive Pastor Jason Best and I, we just sometimes joke, man, we’re still here. What we’re still doing is, you know…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jeff Cranston — …if you came to our church twenty years ago we were still doing this stuff back then. And like I said, we just plodded along. And it’s, you know, God has gratefully blessed it and and and we’ve stayed fairly healthy throughout.

Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. You know, I was I was joking with a church leader, friend probably a year ago and and um, you know, he was reflecting on the Church of the Highlands and Growth Track. And was like you know, really excited about their ah, you know their Growth Track thing and and was commenting—this is one of those times when I realized oh I think I’ve been in this for too long—um because he was reflecting on, man, isn’t that just so innovative? And I was like it feels very much like the the Purposes conversation we’ve been having for a long time. Hey maybe we should push people through a series of very clearly defined steps, or you know run the bases, whatever the framework… The framework can change a little bit obviously…

Jeff Cranston — Sure.

Rich Birch — …ah but I but I love that. Um, what does that look like for you guys? I know you do have kind of classes for each of those, but talk us through at like if if I was a part of the church, what does that experience look like for for someone who’s attending?

Jeff Cranston — Well, we we have what we call core classes…

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Jeff Cranston — …and I’m sure most of the listeners, you know, and their and their ministries have very similar things. So we just we just ask them to come to the Connect class first, and that’s where we share our vision and values. And we do that, um we have three services: 8:30, 10 and 11:30; we offer that at 10am on per…

Rich Birch — Every week?

Jeff Cranston — Every month.

Rich Birch — Most weeks. Every month. Okay.

Jeff Cranston — Yeah, except for the summer, and except for December, and you know there’s always…

Rich Birch — Yep, sure. Yeah, like 10 times 9, 9, 10 times a year, something like that.

Jeff Cranston — Ah yeah, yeah, but we we do keep that one going. And then we we have another core class for grow, reach, serve, and worship. And ah we don’t care what order they take those in.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Jeff Cranston — But that’s part of our discipleship path ah for for folks. And you know when we when we get a man and what we found something, Rich, just in the last year that’s really been working for… So with the Connect class, they come in at ten o’clock they they go to class together, and we’ll have anywhere between 40 and 100 people in in that Connect class. Then we tell them, and we tell them this all ahead of time via video, we get them to register and and they do it. And then we say okay, we’re going to we’re going to go as the Connect class and go worship together at the 11:30 service. And we thought well they’ll never do that. They walk down there en masse and it’s hysterical because when you walk out, speak, or sing, or whatever, you look over here to the right, here’s all these people sitting there with their name tags on, so you know their Connect class people.

Rich Birch — Sure.

Jeff Cranston — And then after the service, we take them right back into the other auditorium where they had the class and we feed them lunch. And I speak for about 5 minutes to them because our executive pastor does the class. And then ah my wife and I, and his wife and and her and then we we ask all of our staff to be there for at least the first 15 or 20 minutes to meet folks. So then our goal is to meet every person, every couple there. And we are finding a very, very high retention rate.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeff Cranston — Ah and and people do it.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jeff Cranston — They’re giving us from about ten o’clock to one o’clock on a Sunday, which has surprised us. But most of the time we when we talk to them they’ll say, we’ve never experienced this in any of the other churches we’ve been in. Or people that are new to church world or you know new to the faith, they don’t know any different.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Jeff Cranston — They just sort of think it’s expected, you know?

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeff Cranston — But that’s been very helpful. And then we those other classes and then there’s other corollaries out of the other other core classes throughout the year in terms of bible studies, or seminars, or conferences, or… And then we we do quarterly worship nights and that’s that’s part of that worship core as as well.

Rich Birch — I love that. And you know for folks that are listening in the thing there’s a number of things to pull out there. That this idea of a regular, of clear and obvious step that people should take. You’d be amazed at how many churches don’t have that.

Jeff Cranston — Right.

Rich Birch — It’s like so I’m kind of new around here, what do I do? And it’s like ah here’s 12 things you could do. Like no, no, no – you you go to Connect class. That’s this that’s the first thing. I also love to and I wanna underline something you said there, you know, how involved your whole team is – the fact that you and your executive pastor, it’s a core part, you know he’s going to teach at it. You’re there to say hi at least at the beginning, which again church, friends, is a church of 2000 people – that’s a big commitment for you. You got lots of stuff to do on on a Sunday.

Rich Birch — Ah, and then the fact that you ask your staff, hey at least show up, be here. This is important this is and all of that weight communicates to people, hey you should, you know, be a part of this thing, be a part of this thing. I love that. That’s that’s so good. That’s that’s fantastic.

Jeff Cranston — And we we try to get them before they leave that, we we try to get them to commit at some level to a next step.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeff Cranston — It might be to serve as a greeter, because anybody, if you can smile, you can serve as a greeter.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeff Cranston — Now some people can’t smile and we don’t want them to do that.

Rich Birch — [laughs] That’s great.

Jeff Cranston — But you know we all have those folks in our churches.

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Jeff Cranston — Or you know the next the next class which will be offered, you know, the next week, the next core class. Or the next month and so we we do have an assimilation process from from that. It’s not always successful. But it it really is working. We’re seeing some really good benefits from that over the last twelve to fifteen months. You know, because like everybody else, when we were coming out of covid, you had a chance to restart…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jeff Cranston — …a lot of things.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jeff Cranston — And we we just re… that was one of the things, we just we killed what we were doing before…

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeff Cranston — …and came up with this new idea. And we love it, and people really seem to appreciate it.

Rich Birch — Love it. Well pivoting in a little bit of a different direction, I noticed ah you know the Kitchen Table Theology ah podcast. And as a podcaster I know ah, that that’s a big commitment to try to do that. You regularly produce content there and, you know, this is above and beyond content than than your weekend services. Ah why did you start that? Talk us through that. You know, as um as a leader at the church, give us a sense of what what was driving that.

Jeff Cranston — I think the last five or ten years, and and I celebrate forty years in ministry in ah next month actually.

Rich Birch — Congratulations.

Jeff Cranston — It’s hard to believe because I’m only… thank you – I’m I’m only 34 years old.

Rich Birch — Yeah, how did that happen?

Jeff Cranston — So it’s amazing how that how that happens but…

Rich Birch — [laughs] Love it.

Jeff Cranston — I’ve I’ve just seen, you know, and it it’s I couldn’t ah I couldn’t ah put hard numbers to it, but I just sensed a growing illiteracy biblically among people in the pew. Non-christians coming to the faith you can understand that. But these are people who’ve been in church for years. Um, can’t tell you the names of the books of the bible. You know one guy said just I said, you know, can you tell me the names of the books of the bible and just interested. And um he just he just holds up his phone, and he says why would I need to memorize it? Well, there’s some things you ought to memorize.

Jeff Cranston — And um so as more I got to looking into it, figured out well hey this is really a thing. And then Ligonier Ministries and Lifeway do ah every two years do a state of the State of Theology in the American Church survey that is sickening and and staggering. It’s you know half of almost half of evangelicals—I don’t have the exact percentage in front of me, but it’s in the 40% range—believe Jesus was a good teacher but not God. These are evangelicals.

Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jeff Cranston — I mean and you go on and on. And I’m like, oh my goodness. So I’d been thinking about doing a podcast for a few years, but I didn’t have a clue. Well here came covid April of 2020. I said, well let’s do it. So we started it then. And I just I was going to try to do 100 podcasts, and just teach systematic theology. And we call it Kitchen Table Theology because I we want to make it understandable and put the theological cookies on the bottom shelf so if you and I were sitting at the kitchen table, having a cup of coffee, and we wanted to talk about the things of God, um, this is the level of conversation we would have. And it’s yeah it it’s taken off a little bit. It’s found a it’s a niche niche audience. But I have I think last year we touched 39 different countries.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing. That’s so cool.

Jeff Cranston — And yeah and it’s it’s amazing to me. And so we just do something every week. So we’ve taught all of the -ologies, and now right now I’m going through every book of the bible, and giving them a little bit of background, and pulling some of the theological themes out of every book. And we’re having a lot of fun with that. So that’s my little bit of throwing the starfish back into the ocean, you know, the old story?

Rich Birch — Okay, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jeff Cranston — I I can’t fix everybody’s biblical illiteracy, but I can help some. And so that’s what we’re doing with it. Yeah.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love It. Can you give me a sense of how that’s impacted either the leaders, maybe your staff, maybe you know people in your church? I would imagine this would be a helpful tool for people even at your church. I understand it’s reaching people all over the world. But what’s even the impact locally?

Jeff Cranston — I I have people every Sunday literally come up to me and just say, thanks so much for the podcast; I’m enjoying listen to it. I found it a couple of months ago. We went back to the beginning and we’re we’re listening all the way through. That that happens every week and and obviously the majority of our listeners are in our footprint, um or the numbers seem to indicate that. But um I’ve just been stunned by it because they’ve never had um, any sort of theological education.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeff Cranston — And even quite frankly, Rich, a lot of I just started seeing it in young men and women that we were considering to bring on staff.

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Jeff Cranston — I started, I wrote up about a half of a page, um Bible survey with about 7 questions. You know can you name me the 5 books of the Pentateuch? Can you tell me where the um, the Beatitudes are located in the Bible? Can you… No.

Rich Birch — Yeah, not rocket science stuff. Yeah, not…

Jeff Cranston — No.

Rich Birch — Yeah yeah, yeah. Right.

Jeff Cranston — Basic. I was almost embarrassed the first couple times I gave it to them. They couldn’t do it. And I thought, what are we producing…

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeff Cranston —…here, sending to our churches and they think they’re ready to go into ministry, and they literally don’t know the books of the Bible even. And so you know there’s there’s there’s young ministers you know in in my mind when we started this. It was for laypeople, and maybe people, even in ministry that didn’t have a real solid theological background. And yeah, so we’re very encouraged that it’s it’s helping a lot of people.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. I love the format. I think the length is great. I think your targeting is yeah and I think you’re bang on, obviously you’ve identified an an actual real issue. I think particularly in one of the there’s lots of upsides to the nondenominational movement. I’ve spent most of my time in nondenominational churches. There’s lots of upsides there, but one of the downsides is there isn’t a formal process by which people get like stamped with, yes, this person has some kind of basic level. And although there can be, you know, certain movements that maybe overstress that, there is a danger…

Jeff Cranston — Right.

Rich Birch — …of understressing that, you know?

Jeff Cranston — Yeah, yeah.

Rich Birch — Like ah you know, in some ways it’s like maybe the the pendulum has swung too far. Speaking on the staff side, um, you know, talk me through how, you know, you’ve been in your church for, like you say two decades plus um, you know what have you learned over the years of a lot you know, keeping your staff aligned, keeping keeping them focused, keeping them kind of heading in the same direction. Give me a sense of what that looks like for you at LowCountry.

Jeff Cranston — Well, we try to keep the mission in front of ourselves on ah on a regular basis, keeping short accounts, talking with our some of our our our key, you know, staff in terms of pastors and ministry directors. Um, reminding them of, okay here’s you know, hey guys it’s sort of the old Vince Lombardi thing, every at the beginning of so of training camp every year. He’d hold up a football and say this is a football.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jeff Cranston — And so a few times a year we kind of go back. Let’s let’s just remember why we’re doing what we’re doing here. You know, it’s to change lives through the message of Jesus Christ. That’s that’s what we’re doing here. And everything we do has to hit hit that some way, shape, or or form. Ah, we’ve been very intentional, Rich, the last few years ah about staff health. And we um, we we partnered with an organization called Best Christian Workplaces which has provided us with a survey.

Jeff Cranston — So we survey our staff, now this year will be the third year, on 8 key components. So what’s it like to work on the staff? Do you like working here? It it covers everything from, you know, is is the leadership inspirational to you, to is there a strategy that you think is sustainable and you understand it and you see where you fit into it? To, is there healthy communication sort of top down, but is there also healthy communication between staff members, and so so much more. And it and it gives you some hard numbers and you find out exactly where your staff are at.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jeff Cranston — Ah and that can be good and bad.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jeff Cranston — You know it can be if you’re insecure as ah, one of the top leaders, this is not the thing for you…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jeff Cranston — …I can I can tell you. And so every year I I kind of take a very deep breath, you know, when we when we get the results. But it’s been very encouraging and you you do see where you’ve got a few holes, and you can shore those things up. And just giving them a voice as staff members I think is very helpful. And and in um, working with Tony Morgan and the Unstuck Group, and working with Best Christian Workplaces, we’ve developed our own culture code, and that has you know everybody had a voice in that.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeff Cranston — And we came up with um, five key components of that culture code. And once a year, or sometimes well more than that, we’ll we’ll just walk through that on on staff meetings.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeff Cranston — Hey, let’s just remember… or you know, it happened it happened this past week we were talking about something in staff meeting, I can’t remember. And somebody said well you know what? That’s that really ties into this certain part of our culture code of us being courageous pioneers. That’s one of the things…

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeff Cranston — …we will be courageous pioneers. And so this is a, you know, we’re kind of setting a new course here, and so to hear them connect what we’re doing back to the culture code and vice versa you you know it’s starting. You know it’s it’s it’s landing with them.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that.

Jeff Cranston — And that’s that’s kept everybody I think ah you know, rowing the boat in the same direction.

Rich Birch — Yeah that’s so good. Like one of the things, and I’d love to talk a little bit more about the culture code. One of the things that we face as as a church is our, you know, our mission is, you know, is pretty clear. Jesus sets it out, you know, some version of reach more people, grow them in their relationship with Jesus. Like we all have some version of that. But how do we boil that down? What makes what we do unique? And then even more pointedly, how do we ask our staff to act? And so I love this.

Rich Birch — You’ve provided us with a copy of ah you know, kind of an overview of the culture code. So you you talked about one of them: we are courageous pioneers. There’s also, we are loyal to one another. We work hard. We play hard. We’re joyously ah, collaborative. And we so we are we are steadfastly committed to growth. I love those and there’s obviously a write up for each one of those. Which of these would you say has the most kind of like edge in the culture, has the most like ooh that actually is pushing us or maybe has a bit of ah, you know, maybe another way to think about it is an area that maybe has a little bit of disagreement, or you know provides the most kind of ah traction for you as you’re as you’re leading?

Jeff Cranston — Yeah, great great question. I think the one that is the most challenging and just how it fleshes out is we are joyously collaborative.

Rich Birch — Sure, talk about that.

Jeff Cranston — Because there are times when we are not joyously collaborative.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jeff Cranston — And there are times you know, just being honest…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jeff Cranston — There are times when um, we want to silo. And one of the statements we have on here is we we neither allow nor accept a colleague to be siloed, or soloed.

Rich Birch — So good.

Jeff Cranston — But there are, you know, sometimes in our ministries we we get rather inward looking in our particular area, and we forget that what we do has an impact on three or four other ministry areas. And then that’s when you start to have some issues. So, having this written out and having everybody… and and they all sign every year in the personnel handbook, this is in there. So they they we ask them to read it every year, sign their name to it. So there’s a commitment at that little biddy level right there. But when we do hit the silos, or when they’re not being collaborative, or if some personalities are rubbing really hard against one another, then we can say hey look we have we look we agreed to this, right? Yeah I know. We we have. Okay, so it’s ah it’s a good place for us to begin those conversations, which has really proven to be helpful. And and and at the end of the day, so far, you know it it works out, and everybody gets back on the same page again. And sometimes an apology is made. Or other times hey you know, um man I didn’t I didn’t realize; I just kind of forgot that that was going to affect A, B and C. Um, yeah, we’ll pull this back and we’ll kind of do a reset, and let let’s let’s work together on this.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. That’s ah, yeah I love that. And again, friends, we’ll we’ll put that in the show notes. I do think it’s a good thing for you to ah to download, to take a look at, to wrestle through. Um you talked a little bit about that you kind of got everybody in on that. Can you tell give us kind of an overview of what that process looked like? How did you actually gather those? How did you narrow it down? Yeah, what did that look like.

Jeff Cranston — Oh that’s a that’s a really good question.

Rich Birch — Sure.

Jeff Cranston — We we got in a room. Um, and we we brought different people in throughout the week, and I think a lot of that was coming with our work with The Unstuck Group with Tony Morgan. And we just started to talk about, well, what’s really…

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeff Cranston — …let’s let’s just boil it down. What’s really important to us as a staff team? What what do we want to be engaged with together, as we do ministry here in this demographic in this footprint at this particular church? And it it came out of the belief, Okay look God has God has meshed all of our lives together to be in this one place at this one time. What is what should that look like? And you know we prayed, we took time, we took months. And then we started to craft some language. And we were just we were starting out by putting keywords on the board. You know collaborative went on the board pretty quickly. Grow growth went on the board pretty quickly. Um, Loyalty went on the board pretty quickly.

Jeff Cranston — I remember us spending a half forty five minutes an hour talking about where we finally got on the the word pioneers. We yeah, we had all kind of things. We we knew what we wanted – we couldn’t find the right words. So we started with the key words and then we we built out around that with with a statement, like we work hard and we play hard. And we and I’m thinking quite frankly is is this really one of the things?

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeff Cranston — You know is that really that important?

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeff Cranston — But it it really is. And and our staff survey you know year after year when we survey them, they love working together and they have fun. You know we’re we’re of the mindset to take God extremely seriously, and don’t take ourselves too seriously.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Jeff Cranston — So we we just we just play together.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Well and and you know that’s why it’s important to get, you know, a number of voices, the right voices around the table. Because sometimes as leaders, you know, it’s like the fish not seeing the water. We’re just in it. We see it and and and…

Jeff Cranston — Yeah.

Rich Birch — We see it from our perspective and getting other people in the room help us like oh yeah, okay. Because you were just like, isn’t that isn’t that everybody? Isn’t everybody work hard and play hard? No not everybody works hard and plays plays hard. So I love that. That’s so good.

Jeff Cranston — Yeah, and we’re all doing all this activity, ministry activity, and I think it’s very healthy to you pull everybody together, hit the pause button and just say why?

Rich Birch — Right.

Why why are we doing what we’re doing?

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeff Cranston — And if you start to get, well we did this last year. That’s no good anymore.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeff Cranston — Last year doesn’t work this year.

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Jeff Cranston — So let’s just let’s just get back to the why, and get back down to some basics. And um man, you know good things really will pop up out of it. And then they feel that they have a voice and you can see their energies levels rising as they begin to think outside the box a little bit. And ah you know and you you get different people in the room with ministry areas that maybe don’t necessarily work together all the time. And now now here they are collaborating on, you know something that’s affecting all of us in our day-to-day ah ministry.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Jeff Cranston — So yeah, that that’s been very helpful for us.

Rich Birch — So good. Well this been a fantastic conversation. Anything else you’d you’d love to share just as we wrap up today’s episode?

Jeff Cranston — Well I I really appreciate the time to be here, and I would just encourage everybody listening if you’re you’re in a ministry of whatever type or kind to just please continue to proclaim the gospel. And never ever allow church work to get you away from the gospel. And let’s go back to the keep the main thing the main thing. Everything everything else has to be an outgrowth of the gospel.

Rich Birch — So good.

Jeff Cranston — And you know we we get ourselves into trouble when we get away from that. And I think in this day and age, ah the American Church has drifted so much more toward experience on a Sunday, you know? And people walking out, well did you like the service?

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeff Cranston — You know, we’re um I don’t get a soapbox but you know what you know what I mean? You’re not here to like the service.

Rich Birch — Sure, sure.

Jeff Cranston — You know we’re here to worship the true and living God…

Rich Birch — Sure. Yes.

Jeff Cranston — …and to sit under the teaching of the word and and and worship and sing and all of that. But we’ve we’ve become so experience-oriented and I think it’s caused that drift away from doctrinal truth and all that. And there can be a really wonderful beautiful marriage of the two, but my my encouragement would be let’s stick to the gospel.

Rich Birch — Love it. So good, brother. Appreciate it, Jeff. What would what else would you or if we want to send people to a place online to track with you, with the church, give them the various addresses, where can they find the podcast as well for folks that want to, you know, tune into that. Give us some of the places we want to send people online who want to track with you.

Jeff Cranston — Sure, thank you. Um Kitchen Table Theology. Anywhere you listen to podcast you’ll find Kitchen Table Theology with Jeff Cranston is what it says. And then our church is lowcountrycc, lowcountrycc.org.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Jeff Cranston — You can also go to jeffcranston.com and ah you can find all this stuff somewhere among those three that we’ve been talking about, yeah.

Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much. Jeff, I really appreciate you being here today. I thank you so much for your help and, yeah, appreciate be on the show.

Jeff Cranston — Thank you, Rich. It’s been a delight.

Doing Less to Reach More: Trevor DeVage on 160% Church Growth in 18 Months

Rich Birch — Thu, 25 May 2023 08:44:00 +0000

Thanks for tuning into this week’s unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Lead Pastor Trevor DeVage from Pantano Christian Church in Arizona, one of the fastest growing churches in the country.

Is your church in a season of growth, needing to streamline its ministries? Or are you trying to simplify your systems so that they will be more scaleable? Listen in as Trevor talks about how simplifying your focus to what aligns with your mission can provide the momentum your church needs to grow.

Gaining momentum. // Pantano Christian Church has a rich history spanning over 60 years, and Trevor is the ninth lead pastor of the church. While the church has been a prevailing force for decades, with the last decade being particularly fruitful in terms of growth and evangelism, Trevor observed that they needed to identify what was leading to their growth. Knowing why you have momentum is the fastest way to catch the next wave of momentum, and Pantano wanted to be more intentional about their growth.
Set a metric for growth. // Pantano’s leadership began by setting a metric for growth so they had goals to work towards. In the summer of 2022 Pantano was averaging about 3400 people, but they believed God wanted to help them reach 8000 people in the Tuscon area between August 2022 and December 2023. However, do to that and maintain the level of excellence they were known for, they knew they would need to eliminate some of the things they were doing as a church.
Simplify your ministry. // Pantano’s staff put together a spreadsheet of everything their ministries were doing. In anticipation of growth, the staff then worked to eliminate anything that wasn’t working or didn’t align with the mission of the church. Removing programs and simplifying structures allowed the church to make their systems scaleable. For example, the discipleship pathway was simplified from being a 42-week program to being a 10-week program that uses Rooted. That change alone enabled the church to put almost 1000 people through Rooted in the last 12 months.
Do less to reach more. // Having seen growth in every area from baptisms to kids ministry to weekend attendance, Trevor is keenly aware that the staff needs to continue to evaluate what needs to be simplified in their ministry so they don’t burn out. Every three months the staff does check-ins to see if anything is out of alignment with the church’s mission. At every growth point identify what else could be removed that no longer fits at your church.
Simplify evangelism. // Evangelism was already a big part of Pantano’s DNA and Trevor and his team further enhanced that by giving their people the simple vision of reaching one person at a time. In the US, it’s tempting to turn evangelism into a program rather than something we naturally do as Christ followers. But Pantano simply empowers their people to be able to tell their stories well, and encourages them weekly to think about their one person and earn the right to be invited into their life. These stories of redemption are then regularly celebrated during weekend services.
Lead the process. // Trevor admits that simplification is the hardest thing the church has had to do, but it’s had a tremendous impact on the effectiveness of the ministry. Lead pastors need to embrace simplification and drive the process, rather than expecting the staff team to do it. By simplifying the vision and owning it, you will model it to your staff in return.

You can find more about Pantano Christian Church at www.pantano.church and connect with Trevor on social media @trevordevage.

Thank You for Tuning In!

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. Super excited that you have decided to tune in today. You know every week we try to bring you a leader who will both inspire, equip you, motivate you, point you in ah in a new direction, and today is no exception. I am super excited to have Trevor DeVage with us. He is from Pantano Christian Church – they’re in Tucson, Arizona. They started in 1961, but today they’re one of the fastest growing churches in the country. Ah, it’s it’s launched four church plants in Southern Arizona and they’ve really started thousands of church literally globally. And Trevor joined here in 2022. Trevor, welcome to the show. Glad you’re here.

Trevor DeVage — Well man, it’s good to be on. Thanks for having me. Um, it’s it’s gonna be fun.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I’m really looking forward to this. We were joking ahead of time we have some common friends. It’s always fun to interact with people who are like know each other, and know each other’s friends, which is great. So why don’t you tell us, kind of fill in the Pantano story, kind of what did I miss there? People who show up this weekend, what would they experience, give us a sense of that.

Trevor DeVage — Yeah, so you’re absolutely right. We just celebrated 60 years um last last year. Actually a year ago this week we celebrated 60 years and ah and so this church has got a very rich history. We’ve um I’m actually the ninth lead pastor of this church. And so um, over 60 years that’s ah, I think that’s a pretty good pattern. In fact, um, the the last really the last 25 really last 35 years, that’s been 3 guys. Um, there was a guy named Ed Towne who, man, was just visionary for Tucson, visionary for the church. Um Ed Towne was actually killed in a car accident here in Tucson um, as the church was kind of growing. And they they really thought you know the the leaders of the church thought, man, we we may be done because Ed was, they were kind of at that critical growth point as a church. And um, that’s hard. You lose a pastor in an accident.

Trevor DeVage — And ah, then this guy named Tim Coop came in who’s pretty much a legend on the and the west coast especially, but Arizona. You you say the name Tim Coop out here and everyone’s like oh Tim Coop.

Rich Birch — Right.

Trevor DeVage — And it was really the visionary that that made Pantano a church that was going to be more than just a neighborhood church. It was going to be a church that was gonna pretty much just storming the gates of hell here in Tucson. And they moved the property we’re on now, and then um Tim had this, like like most guys will, we’re all interim pastors by the way…

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Trevor DeVage — …that’s that’s Glen says my predecessor where some of us are in arms for 30 years; some are for three weeks, you know, but…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Trevor DeVage — Um, ah that was when Glen Elliott, who was the executive pastor at the time, um Tim went to him and was like, man I I think you need to lead this thing, and I’m ready to retire. And Glen had never been a lead pastor. And Glen was like and a missionary in Ukraine, he’d been a pastor in Cincinnati but he’d never been lead pastor. And he stepped into that role and Glen built an unbelievable church over the last 22 years.

Trevor DeVage — And so I’m standing on the shoulders of an unbelievable legacy, that I look around our church right now and I’m like, why do I get to be a part of this? Like it’s it it’s like there’s Mount Rushmore and then they put like Homer Simpson on the side. You know what it feels in a little bit.

Rich Birch — [laughs] Ah, come on man, come on that… yeah, love that. I hear what you’re saying. Well I love that you’re taking time to honor, you know, the the legacy the leaders that have come before you. That’s that’s such an important thing, particularly, you know, with a historic church like yours it’s been around, you know, historic. I was just in I spent a bunch of time in in England in the last ah you know last six months…

Trevor DeVage — And we’re not historic.

Rich Birch — I know and I it was such a different perspective. One of the churches I was interacting with there, they’ve been on that site for 1000 years. There’s been a church on that one one…

Trevor DeVage — Wow.

Rich Birch — …which is crazy. It’s crazy. But anyways, ah you know, but something has changed in the last few years, you know. Pantano really seeing ah you know some incredible growth, and I’d love to kind of dig into that. Why don’t you kind of take us back ah, kind of pre- that growth. Give us a sense of the church and then let’s talk through what’s what’s gone on these last few years.

Trevor DeVage — Yeah, well Pantano’s history even… I hate that we have to talk in like PC and and AC, right? Pre-covid, post-covid or after covid.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, it’s helpful though.

Trevor DeVage — It is helpful, but pre-covid I mean Pantano’s been a prevailing church for decades. Um.

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Trevor DeVage — The last decade in particular I mean Pantano was pre-covid, man, this church was going and blowing, man. They were baptizing people, they were they were growing, adding services, adding adding seats, ah the whole deal, right? And then of course the the great shutdown of the world happened and everything kind of came to a halt. Um, the word we all hate around here. Our team hates this word but it’s a reality. Everybody had to pivot. Um, which I think I think of a friend…

Rich Birch — Oh yes, if I hear that one more time…

Trevor DeVage — Yeah, ah, the only time I wanna hear it now is Ross screaming it on Friends, right?

Rich Birch — Yes, exactly. Exactly.

Trevor DeVage — Um, but coming out of covid, so Glen decided in the middle of the pandemic I think it’s time for me to step aside. And Glen Glen has got a lot of like he’s got a lot left in the tank like he didn’t have to retire. Um and he actually he would he would even say he didn’t retire, he just kind of reallocated his his time. But coming out of that, um we were we were coming out of a pretty hard season in Ohio. Glenn and I had been friends for for quite some time. And ah I thought Glen already retired and so he he calls me in the midst of us kind of going through our hell on earth and he was like wait, you’re available? And I was like, apparently. And he was like, I wanted you like two years ago; I just didn’t think you were movable. And I was like, oh, okay. Um, well why didn’t you call me two years ago; that might have saved me a little bit pain.

Trevor DeVage — But um, here we here we are, and we step into this and here’s what drew me to Tucson. One that three hundred and so fifty days of sunshine doesn’t hurt. But um, what drew me to here was that this is a church that um they are massively aggressive at evangelizing the community around them. And so Glen’s heartbeat was evangelism. My heartbeat is evangelism. I’m way better with lost people than I am a church people. And so um, I’ve just always had…

Rich Birch — What does that look like? What is that massively… how how did you would diagnose like, okay this this church is massively – that’s huge word, massively aggressive at evangelism. What are some of the things that have happened in the past that [inaudible] towards that.

Trevor DeVage — Well, well even just the like something simple, because service, right? Service is huge.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Trevor DeVage — So I say something simple, but my first weekend on site, we do a thing called Serve Our City where we shut down our church for a weekend. And we we sent like 1700 people into our community to serve for a Sunday.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Trevor DeVage — And people are like well and now church people, they always, like pastors, are like well what do you do about offering?

Rich Birch — [laughs]

Trevor DeVage — I’m like I’m like it’s…

Rich Birch — No, I’m sure the listeners on this show don’t they’re not really that was not their first concern.

Trevor DeVage — Yeah, yeah, yeah, not at all. Ah, but I mean expressly coming out of covid where budgets are…

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yes, yes, yeah.

Trevor DeVage — Um, but what we found, I mean 70 so I got to be secret shopper for one day here. because I’d been hired and nobody knew it.

Rich Birch — Right. Okay. Fun.

Trevor DeVage — So I got to go to all these locations and none of these people knew me. So it was like undercover boss, you know?

Rich Birch — Yes.

Trevor DeVage — And so I go to all these sites around town. And what I found was as I was talking to people, the reason they’re a part of Pantano is because Pantano cares more about the community than it does about itself.

Rich Birch — Oh so good.

Trevor DeVage — And and so I was like, okay this is my heartbeat; this is who we are. Um, and so all the DNA of Pantano, like all the undergirding of evangelism and the verbiage was all there. Um I think covid just kind of put everything on a halt. And so um, we as I came in, you know, Glen on purpose here’s what’s beautiful about Glen and I’s transition: Glen on purpose didn’t start any new initiatives two years before he retired. The only thing he did was remodel our auditorium, which I’m so thankful today because in the old auditorium we would have been out of space six months ago. Now we’re out of space right now. But that’s the only thing he did. He didn’t, no new visionary initiatives. No new like church plant initiatives, multisite, none of that. He was like I wanted the people to be so primed to go when you got here that when you hit the ground, they could just catapult. And and so literally we just infused like this B12 shot of Glen’s excitement about what we were doing, my excitement coming in the door, and ah man it just it’s catapulted in the last really the last eighteen months. We have…

Rich Birch — Love it.

Trevor DeVage — Here’s here’s what’s crazy: I mean just the number of people that have given their life to Jesus in this place in the last eighteen months. We just this weekend coming up, we will we will surpass 700 baptisms since January of 22. So…

Rich Birch — Wow! That’s amazing!

Trevor DeVage — Yeah, so last year we had 412 last year where it ah we’ll we’ll go over over 295 for this year this weekend that we’ve got. Um easter was our our highest baptisms ever on a Sunday; we had 145 baptisms Easter Sunday…

Rich Birch — Wow, that’s amazing.

Trevor DeVage — It was really just God. And it was really really cool because I had Glen and our executive pastor, Roger, doing the baptisms on Easter, and ah—which Glen’s still around; he’s volunteers. He’s a rock star—um, and so he told me before Easter he goes, our our record for one day was 99 baptisms. I said when we get to a hundred I want Glen to get the hundredth baptism and so.

Rich Birch — Oh so sweet.

Trevor DeVage — That that he baptized the hundredth, and he baptized the one hundred and forty fifth, which was really cool. Um, but to see his excitement is the guy that is, you know, you want your predecessor to be proud of what’s going on here. He has just been massively supportive of the growth that is happening; he’s this is why we did what we did is because this next wave. So the last year we’re we’re up about 15- to 1800 people over this time last year.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Trevor DeVage — Um, and I wish I could tell you, man, we’re just brilliant strategists. Um, and I really it come back to something you and I’ve been talking about as just simplicity, is what we’ve really dove into.

Rich Birch — Yes. Love it. Well so ah, well first of all I love all that context. That is so good. And what an amazing um, you know that fact that you’ve, you know, baptized or you’re cross over 700 baptisms since the beginning of last year, that’s that’s just amazing. That’s that’s incredible. Well I’d love to hear about that simplicity piece. So what, you know, what are some of the ways that you’ve simplified? And has that been how much of that was response to growth, because you know as things start to scale it’s like, gosh we’ve got to get simpler because we just can’t keep all this complexity. Or was it proactive like, hey, let’s try to you know pull some of these things out?

Trevor DeVage — Well, it started off as proactive because when I came in the door I hit the ground full time June of last year but I was flying back and forth from January to June, so I was here twelve days a month for like six months.

Rich Birch — Ok.

Trevor DeVage — In that six months I did a lot of just reconnaissance. I was listening a lot to our team. I was listening a lot to our church. And I was watching, without us doing any strategy really that first six months, I was watching our church like hit these waves. I think I can’t remember… I’m going to give Rick Warren credit because that’s who I heard say it. He…or and maybe it was Andy Stanley…

Rich Birch — He’s a good guy to give, either of those guys are good guys to give credit to.

Trevor DeVage — Um, you know just I’ll give them credit. Um, it’s not mine I can tell you that.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Trevor DeVage — Um, but the the whole if you know having momentum and not knowing why you have momentum is the fastest way to lose momentum. Um, but momentum and knowing why you have momentum is a fastest way to catch the next wave of momentum. And so.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Trevor DeVage — Um, we just saw these waves the first six months. One was I got hired and so there was this energy that came with that. And then there was um, there was Easter and I I tried to get Glen to preach that last Easter, and he was like this is not my last Easter, it’s you’re first. And I I fought him on it. I was like, no bro I want you to. I was like, as the new lead pastor I’m telling you you’re preaching Easter. He goes [inaudible] I got news for you, as the outgoing lead pastor I’m telling you I’m not. And but he I’m doing that to solidify your leadership, he goes because that Sunday will solidify for the community your leadership. And it was brilliant. He was right.

Rich Birch — Ah, that’s glorious like.

Trevor DeVage — And then we rode that Easter wave into the sixtieth celebration, and the Glen sendoff, and we moved here in June. So there was just all these waves. So when I finally got on the ground full time, I looked at we did a lead team retreat. We got away for two days and I just told our team I said growth growth is already happening and we’ve done nothing, except ride waves.

Trevor DeVage — Um, I said so if we get strategic so we got away for two days. I said I need to know what is… we got to set a metric of growth. And I know sometimes in the church we start talking numbers and everyone’s like oh all you care about is numbers. There’s an entire book of the bible called Numbers. Somebody cares about Numbers. Um.

Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.

Trevor DeVage — Somebody made a count in the book of Acts for the amount of people that showed up on the day of Pentecost. All these lives matter to us. We live in the twelfth largest unchurched city in America, in Tucson. So out of a million people in Pima County, Arizona um, 850,000 don’t know Jesus.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Trevor DeVage — And and they’re not antagonistic towards the gospel. They just don’t know.

Rich Birch —Right.

Trevor DeVage — So it’s not like a Portland; it’s not like a San Francisco. They just don’t know what they don’t know. And so I said to our team, I said, we need to set a metric for December of 2023—this was August of last year. December is coming really quick now that that I…

Rich Birch — It sounded like a long ways away.

Trevor DeVage — It sounded like a long way away for vision back in August. Um, and so we came back two months later, and I’m sitting in a leadership team meeting with our team. and I I just I looked at our team I said, all right, I wanted I had a number in my head of what our growth would look like. And I thought it was a good number. And I thought it was a Godly number. And I thought it was a big number. And and then I looked at one of my lead team members and he looked at me—and keep in mind we were running like 34- 3300 right at that moment—and he looks at me, probably one of the most Godly men on our staff, and he looks at me and he goes, I’ve been praying about it and God told me I think 8000 is what we’re going to reach in 2023.

Rich Birch — What?! Oh my goodness.

Trevor DeVage — And now my face said, man, that’s cool. Inside my head I was like, that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. I’m I’m literally like, I’m looking at trying to be as kind with my eyes as possible; in my head I’m like, you’re an idiot.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Trevor DeVage — Like that’s I would use you might as well said a gajillion, like that’s that’s what it sounded like. The next guy at the table goes, oh my gosh I was praying and I got the same thing. And I’m now…

Rich Birch — What…

Trevor DeVage — I’m like I’m looking at both of them like I’ve got two morons on my staff. That’s that’s literally what’s going through my head. I’m like they’ve lost their mind.

Rich Birch — Two open roles as…

Trevor DeVage — Yeah, [inaudible] they’ve been in the parking lot doing drugs? Like what happened? And I start to look around the table and there’s about 15 people on our lead team and nobody seems like baffled by this. They’re all like, yeah that sounds about right. And I’m like so I had elders meeting that night. I go to the elders I’m like they’ll speak reason into this, right?

Rich Birch — Yes.

Trevor DeVage — I’m like I’ll go to my board. They’ll speak reason. So I primed them too. I was like, guys I got tell you this crazy thing that our staff just said today. And I’m setting them up for like they’re gonna take my side. They’re gonna be in and I told ‘em I was like, our staff said we’re gonna, basically we’re gonna double in eighteen months. and ah I was waiting for it and they were like, oh yeah, that sounds about right.

Rich Birch — [laughs]

Trevor DeVage — And I just in my head I was like, I have moved my family to the land of delusion. Like these people…

Rich Birch — What is in the water? What is in the water in Tucson?

Trevor DeVage — [inaudible] off the mountain, like apparently they didn’t purify their water. Like I’ve seen Naked and Afraid, and I’m afraid right now, like I’m afraid.

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Trevor DeVage — And ah so I literally I’m on my back porch two days later and I’m praying. And God literally, if I’ve ever, I don’t hear God audibly speak. Like if it it’s James Earl Jones or Morgan Freeman, right? And and what what I’ve distinctly got is I’m sitting on my patio one morning, is God God literally spok into my soul like, why are you the only one on the team that’s putting limits on me?

Rich Birch — Oh wow.

Trevor DeVage — And I I was like all right, I’ll shut up now.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Trevor DeVage — It feels like Job, you know? All right, I’ll shut up. I’ve already said…

Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Oh man. Wow.

Trevor DeVage — So that started the process, if we’re going to reach 8000 people in eighteen months, um we can’t keep doing everything that we’re doing because Pantano has a history, if you ask anybody in our town anybody in church world in our city, Pantano is known for excellence at all things.

Trevor DeVage — So you walk in everything will be done with the utmost of excellence. And so, I told all of our teams I said I need you—so this is where the process started in September of last year—I said I need you to put on a spreadsheet everything your ministry does.

Rich Birch — Okay, okay. Right.

Trevor DeVage — So ah if you look at just one ministry, it’s like okay they do a lot. But when you look at all ministries, I mean it was pages of stuff.

Rich Birch — Wow. Right.

Trevor DeVage — And and I just told them I said, if we’re going to even get to 5000, you’ve got to cut some stuff out of this. And I said it’s not eliminating bad things, we should stop doing whatever doesn’t fit.

Rich Birch — Right.

Trevor DeVage — But if it doesn’t fit the mission of what we’re trying to accomplish, there’s things we love that we need to stop doing. And I said, this gonna be hard because you guys have some babies that you love in that list…

Rich Birch — So true.

Trevor DeVage — …that you’re going to have to get rid of.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Trevor DeVage — You know it’s like you get the puppy that you get attached to and then it grows and you’re like, oh now we got give the dog away.

Rich Birch — Right.

Trevor DeVage — Well there was a lot of puppies in that list that we were gonna have to give away. And so our our team went through this hard task of, from basically September to October of last year, of eliminating.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Trevor DeVage — And and it wasn’t elimination nearly as much as it was, what do we what are we gonna do that meets our mission which will help us determine what we say no to. And

Rich Birch — Okay.

Trevor DeVage — And I I told our team I said, you can make anything fit.

Rich Birch — Right.

Trevor DeVage — You can you like I can we got basket weaving for Jesus; I can make that fit, right?

Rich Birch — Yes, yeah.

Trevor DeVage — We don’t have basket weaving.

Rich Birch — I can tell that story.

Trevor DeVage — Yeah, yeah.

Rich Birch — So help me understand that was what I… just to drill down on that kind of one layer deeper… Well first of all I love that. I love even just the the task of asking our teams to get it all into one place, like let’s get it all into one document. I think that alone is an eye-opening you know, experience for folks. Give me a sense of some of those things, maybe like easy cuts that were like of course of course that just makes sense, like basket weaving for Jesus, ah, you know. Or ones that maybe were a little tougher, things that were like, ooh I’m not sure that that feels a little bit more close to the bone. Can you just sense the kinds of things that started to bubble out?

Trevor DeVage — Ah, well I’ll use our discipleship department. Um, and ah Cindy who oversees our discipleship department, our Discipleship Pastor, she’s fantastic. Been here a long time. Um, we had we had three we had a pathway discipleship pathway, but it was 42 weeks.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Trevor DeVage — You would have to go through um discovering faith. Um, you would have to go through, um I’m trying to remember – there was three legs to this. And then we started Rooted.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Trevor DeVage — Um and I looked at that and I just went I said, Cindy, I said, we’re asking people, we’re trying to get people to know Jesus faster. But then we we get them in a discipleship pipeline and we’re saying but it’s going to take you 42 weeks before we deem you a mature enough disciple to do anything.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Trevor DeVage — And and she was like, okay. I said and I I told her I said, I’ll let you run this course till till December, and in January will reevaluate. She came back to me in October and goes, I can’t wait till January. She goes, I see where we’re going; I see what it’s gonna take. We’ve got to go all in with Rooted. So she moved these two other pieces into into just electives for people. So our disciples pathway went from 42 weeks to ah to ten weeks.

Rich Birch — Oh wow; that’s a huge cut.

Trevor DeVage — Ah and and so when you expedite by 3 years, that that expedites your church by 3 years.

Rich Birch — Right, right, right.

Trevor DeVage — Um and and actually it expedites it faster because now in the last in the last year we’ve put almost a thousand people through Rooted.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Trevor DeVage — And and so um, the only 2 things we talk about here at Panano, you’ll hear it if you are ever to listen or watch, is we talk about Rooted – sign up for Rooted, get in Rooted, we celebrate Rooted, we talk about Rooted. Um and we talk about inviting your one to church. And actually we don’t talk about inviting them to church, we talk about inviting them into your life first. Earn the right to invite—that’s kind of our phrase—earn the right to invite to church. But the only way you earn the right to invite is invite yourself into their life first. And our people have grabbed the one, like that’s it’s not new um, but it was in our DNA. So I just grabbed low-hanging fruit of we got to stop doing, we’ve gotta focus. Um and really Rooted and One, but that came from Cindy cutting a whole bunch of stuff…

Rich Birch — That’s amazing.

Trevor DeVage — …um that she loved, that she started, but she was like, alright I’m good; I see the vision. Let’s go. And ah…

Rich Birch — Right.

Trevor DeVage — …I mean same thing across the board: kids, students, ah our production, worship and arts team. We’ve got a cafe that feeds couple thousand people a weekend on site.

Rich Birch — Right.

Trevor DeVage — And ah, they’ve had to get more simplistic. Even our even our engagement pathway, like Starting Point, Discover Pantano, Launching Point, um, even we even shifted our mission statement, we didn’t shift it, it was our mission statement, we just leaned into it. We don’t have volunteers here anymore. Um, so a little shift of verbiage for our people, our our mission statement is loving people to Jesus, launching passionate difference-makers.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Trevor DeVage — We we got up in a series called Difference Makers and said we don’t, we thank you for volunteer; we don’t want volunteers at Pantano anymore. We want difference makers.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Trevor DeVage — Um, and so we we got rid of volunteers. But we were like, everybody can make a difference. And we want you to make a difference in your community, make a difference in your church, make a difference in your family, make a difference in your work, make a difference in your school.

Trevor DeVage — And and so those things, man, just the simplicity of that… Here’s what’s crazy: so we we get to Easter, right at 9000 people for Easter…

Rich Birch — Wow.

Trevor DeVage — …um, and then post Easter I thought okay we’ll settle in; we were averaging about 4700 before Easter. I thought okay we’ll be about 5000 after Easter. well we went from 4700 to 5700 in a week.

Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.

Trevor DeVage — And and so now we’ve been we’ve kind of blown through that that 5000 barrier.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Trevor DeVage — And three weeks ago I sat down with our team and I went, remember what we did last summer? Um, we’re gonna do it again.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Trevor DeVage — Um, because if we’re going to go from now almost 6000 to 8000 by December, we can’t do everything we’re doing right now to get to 8000.

Rich Birch — Oh love that.

Trevor DeVage — You guys will be burning out, your team will go… So we’re constantly now evaluating at every growth point. We do three month check-ins. We have a document. It’s called the “smells like smoke” document, which comes from…

Rich Birch — [laughs]

Trevor DeVage — It comes from Jude 23, my favorite scripture: rescue others by snatching them from the flames of judgment.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Trevor DeVage — Um, and we say if you’re if you’re going to help people see Jesus, you gotta get close enough to the pits of hell to get them out. So you better you better smell like smoke. And um and so we we have this document so we just checked the metrics the other day, it was um that we set last year… Average 4500 by Easter; well, we did that. Um it was run um, over over 700 people through Rooted. We did that. Um our student ministry has gone from 50 kids on Wednesday night to 225 kids on Wednesday night.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Trevor DeVage — Our our kids ministry’s gone from 200 kids to almost 450 kids. Like all of these things…

Rich Birch — Love it.

Trevor DeVage — …everything’s up and to the right. Now we also understand there’s a lot of excitement when growth is happening.

Rich Birch — Sure.

Trevor DeVage — Um I’m I’m actually praying for those plateau moments so we can breathe.

Rich Birch — Yeah, take a deep breath.

Trevor DeVage — Right, to plan for the next wave. Um, but now what happened is we’re out of parking. We have no parking.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Trevor DeVage — We can grow in our auditorium, but we can’t park anybody. So.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Trevor DeVage — Um, now we’re adding we’re going to go to 3 services in and July, um in an auditorium that can see just over 1800 we’re we’re out of space in 2 services. So our online ministry is growing. We planted a microsite in ah in a Mission here in town. We’re going to launch a couple more of those this year, but we’ve got to add a third service because God’s God’s bringing people.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Trevor DeVage — Um, but it all goes back to simplicity, man.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that.

Trevor DeVage — Like it it just do less to reach more. That’s what we constantly say…

Rich Birch — I love that. So this…

Trevor DeVage — …do less to reach more.

Rich Birch — I just think that’s so good. So much in there to unpack. I love um I want to come back to the invite culture stuff in um, in a minute. I want to ask kind of get your thoughts on how you’re cultivating that with your people. But on the opposite end of of um, what I hear you saying is, we need to simplify so that we’ve got the energy, the resources, the focus, the the ability, to move people um, you know when things are simpler. I love that. That’s a very vivid example: forty two weeks to ten weeks. We’ve talked about Rooted a bunch of times on the podcast; we had Erin Smith or sorry um Erin Kerr on a couple years ago ah, from Mariners talking about Rooted, and many people have have many churches have talked about a similar kind of experience. Fantastic.

Rich Birch — What what have has there been anything in the last eighteen months that you’ve added, or the church has added, because of this extra the extra cycles that you think is also helping you that are… Are there new behaviors? There may not be but I wondered if there’s any new behaviors, new systems, new pieces of the puzzle that you think you might be using?

Trevor DeVage — You know that’s an interesting question. I haven’t even thought of that. Um we because we we didn’t really add anything…

Rich Birch — Right.

Trevor DeVage — …we just enhanced what we already here. Um I just begin to look at the DNA of our church…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Trevor DeVage — …because I still get 30,000 foot view – I’m getting closer I’m I’m starting to get closer to the ground. Um but I still have the perspective and so here here’s what I knew about Glen, Glen was a systems builder. Glen was a strategist. Um, he was great at strat-ops. He like all of so none of our systems were broken. Nothing was broken at Pantano when I got here. So all I had to do was turn dials to fit my personality and my leadership.

Rich Birch — Sure.

Trevor DeVage — And and so um, not I wouldn’t say we’ve added, I’d say what has shifted in our culture is we have focused so hard on the One. Um, it’s literally our DNA every weekend. You’ll hear it every weekend. We mention every message has something that leads back to the One. And ah our people, this is again southwest versus Midwest. I came to the midwest to the southwest.

Trevor DeVage — I Really thought I would be fighting battles here. I don’t fight. Um the battles I fight are church people that want to move too quickly. Um, in the Midwest I fought church people that didn’t know what quick was.

Rich Birch — Okay, okay, interesting.

Trevor DeVage — Um and so you know I’m saying?

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Trevor DeVage — Like our people are clamoring, like just give us vision to go after. And and we’ve given them just a simple vision: one person at a time.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.

Trevor DeVage — And so now on our baptism Sundays backstage people are like, this is my One, this is my One, this is my One.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah. Love it. Love it. Love it. Love it.

Trevor DeVage — It’s just in verbiage. Um I don’t I don’t know that we’ve added anything; I think we’ve enhanced is what we’ve done.

Rich Birch — Enhanced. Yeah that makes sense. More focus, more energy, taking the energy from other things and said hey… Yeah like even that 42 to ten weeks example, obviously those ten weeks um you know, you’ve got more time, she’s got more time to focus on that to make that and even better experience – that makes total sense.

Rich Birch — Talk to me more about the invite culture thing. I love… you kind of tip to hitting it there – the one, the one, the one. Talk us through, from your perspective as a lead pastor, you know we see this in fast-growing churches. You know the difference between plateaued—one of my core convictions is—plateaued, stuck, declining churches and growing churches is growing churches training, equip, mobilize, motivate, there are people to invite their friends, and you’re clearly doing that. Talk us through what that looks like from your seat, from you know the things that you’re doing as a church.

Trevor DeVage — Yeah, well I think first of all, it’s like we simplify to amplify.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Trevor DeVage — So what we simplify is what gets amplified.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Trevor DeVage — So what we have simplified as evangelism.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Trevor DeVage — And we’ve made I think traditionally in the church, at least in America, we have made we’ve made evangelism a program. And evangelism is not a program; evangelism is what we are called to be as Christ followers. So the great commission says go and make, not sit and take. We have just leaned into our our culture of our people. Um I’ve told ‘em, I’m like, if you want a church to sit and and take from, you want to just get fat off the church spiritually this is not the church for you.

Trevor DeVage — We love you. We’ll we’ll help you find a church. Um, but this is a mobilizing church. And so we just we have we have shifted our people to be able to tell their story well, and it’s not hard. I’m like it’s your story; just go tell it. And so we what we have literally done is, it sounds so like simplistic and so trite, but the reality is we just tell them every week, earn the right to invite. So who’s your One? Ah we we about once a month I have them re-write it down, write that name down. Do you have that name? I ask them all the time. Do you have a One?

Trevor DeVage — The other piece that I think is more key is our staff, part of our staff um review is who is your One, and what are you doing about it?

Rich Birch — Oh good, good, good.

Trevor DeVage — If our staff doesn’t own it, our church will never own it. So the cool thing is I’ve got staff members that in the last year they’re like, this is the first time I’ve actually invited someone. Great!

Rich Birch — Right.

Trevor DeVage — And they’ve come. You know?

Rich Birch —Yes, yes, yes.

Trevor DeVage — And it’s like great. Like I play golf. That’s that’s my thing; I play golf. Um, I’ve got to baptize about 8 guys that I play golf with in Tucson.

Rich Birch — Right. Love it.

Trevor DeVage — Um, it’s just an invite. Like and I yesterday I played golf with a couple guys. One goes to our church, one doesn’t.

Rich Birch — Right

Trevor DeVage — Um and now they’ve invited me to play golf. And I’m like, sweet. So you just invited me into 4 hours of getting to evangelize you. Thank you. Like ah it.

Rich Birch — I’ll take it.

Trevor DeVage — We tell those stories all the time.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Trevor DeVage — Like you can’t not tell; you have to tell the story all the time. So we’re constantly telling the story about our Ones, and whether that’s in video, whether that’s from the platform, whether that’s in Rooted, whether that’s in a small group, whether that’s in the café. Like everywhere we talk about… There’s a big display in our lobby. It’s seven foot plexiglass 3D letters that say One. We put a ballpit ball with the name of every baptism in the date in there.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Trevor DeVage — Um, and it’s just visual reminders and then we have cards outside our auditorium literally they’re little square like 4 by 4 cards. Um, it’s literally just an invite card that we can’t keep them in stock.

Rich Birch — Right.

Trevor DeVage — People take them every Sunday.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Trevor DeVage — Um, we’ve just created a culture of invite where if you get them, if you invite them here, we’re going to make sure they get Jesus and they get it in a relevant, authentic way.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. Well I think, you know, there’s so much I love about this, and you know about a month ago, six weeks ago I was at a church and you know they had me in for a coaching thing. And you know I was on Monday I did not on Sunday but on Monday I was challenging the the lead pastor on exactly this. I said you know some of this stuff is not rocket science. Some of it just comes down to like exactly what you’re saying there, which is like let’s articulate, hey next week is a great week for you to bring your friends for these reasons. Like even just, hey my my message is going in this this direction. Do you know, somebody who’s like this? They should come. You know having those invite cards, doing um you know all those there’s one thousand and one of those little things. I love that such a great example. Friends, ah, you know, Trevor just unleashed a whole bunch of great ideas in a very short period of time. You’ve probably got to go back and write down some notes. They’re so good.

Rich Birch — This has been a fantastic conversation. Trevor, as we’re kind of coming into land, anything else you want to share? Any other kind of pieces of the puzzle you want to make sure that we’re we’re thinking about?

Trevor DeVage — Yeah, here’s what I would say, just as lead pastor to any other lead pastors out there. And I know there’s a lot more than lead pastors that listen this podcast. But um and if you’re not lead pastor, lean in so you can talk to your lead pastor about it. Um, but lead pastors you have to be, one, you have to own your vision of what you’re asking everybody else to do.

Trevor DeVage — And and when you simplify, simplification is the hardest thing we do. Ah ah like our team I’m like it’s easy to be complex because complex is job security, because if you’re the only one that can describe it, you get to keep your job for a while.

Rich Birch — Oh dude, come on. That’s so good.

Trevor DeVage — Um, but but but simplicity, like Craig Groeschel a couple years ago in his leadership podcast. He said he got introduced as the most boring leader in America. And he and he said, I was offended at first. He goes, but what the guy meant was when you go to Life Church, you know exactly what you’re gonna get, and you know what they’re about.

Trevor DeVage — And ah and I told our team we’re going to be known as the most boring leadership team on the planet earth because when you come to Pantano, I want you to know exactly who we are and what you’re going to get. Pastors, stop like stop complexifying your organization—I don’t think that’s the word but I made it one—um make sure that this… when you go simplicity you have to buy the simplicity first, and you have to drive the simplicity. Don’t ask your team to drive it. You have to drive it.

Trevor DeVage — Um, and then if you drive it enough, your team will catch it. And then you’re just managing the simplicity, which is actually job security. The more simple you can make it, I think the more people you reach. Um, again, our line around here is do less to reach more.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Trevor DeVage — And if you do less you will reach more when you understand who you are so.

Rich Birch — Love it. So good. This has been a fantastic conversation. I love that analogy of being you know more boring. One of the things you know we’ve talked about in a bunch of contexts is your people won’t invite their friends if they don’t know what is going to happen at whatever thing it is we’re talking about – a service or whatever. They need to be able to be predictable. It needs to be… because when if you think about at the point of invite, you know, I talk to you I’m like hey you come this weekend, there’s gonna be a great band. There’s gonna be, you know, whatever this kind of music, that kind of thing. Well, let’s say if they show up and there’s a there’s a a giant orchestra there, which you could argue is actually better than a 5-piece band. You could say actually that’s a better thing. But it’s different than what I invited you to. It’s different than what I said. What does that do in the relationship? It enters this like oh I you don’t know actually know what’s going on at your own church. It makes people nervous.

Trevor DeVage — [inaudible] is what it feels like.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Trevor DeVage — And what I’ve found is is most most people in our culture here, they don’t care about our band. They don’t care about the quality.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Trevor DeVage — They care about authenticity.

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Trevor DeVage — And so now we do ah really, our team is fantastic.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Trevor DeVage — But what resonates with our people is they feel like there’s no pedestals at Pantano. We have no Pantano pedestals. We kick those over all the time.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Trevor DeVage — Um I’m I’m horrible on a pedestal. I can’t hold my balance anyhow. Um, but we try to be as real as we can be with people. And I think it’s in that that authenticity is what people are looking for.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Trevor DeVage — Um, and as culture is shifting out of a pandemic into whatever the next thing of the world is um, you know the number one thing we did coming out of Easter is we’ve talked about anxiety, mental health. Um, we’ve had a massive growth out of Easter because we just we’re we’re going talk about mental health. Ah talk about things that the church is traditionally not talked about, but do it in a simple way and people will grab a hold of it.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. Trevor, I’m just so thankful that you were on the show today. I also just want to pause for a moment, friends, and just honor you for your the way that you’re speaking about your predecessors. Friends, it would have been very easy for Trevor to come on and been like, here’s all the changes I made when I showed up and everything’s amazing. Now he wouldn’t have said it like that because he’s a good Christian so he wouldn’t have, you know, he would have couched it in a better way. But he didn’t. Listen carefully to the way he has honored Glen and the leaders that’s come before him. You know, personally as an outsider looking in I think that’s a part of what God’s doing here. He’s he’s honoring your humble leadership in the midst of all that. So I just I just want to honor you, Trevor, for that. It’s ah it’s great to engage with that. I appreciate you being on the show. If we where do we want to send people if they want to track with you, with the church where do we want to send them online?

Trevor DeVage — Yeah, I mean the best place to go is pantano.church – um that’s our website and you can get everything there. We we actually do have a church podcast called The Make. And so you can you can dive deeper with us there and that’s on our website as well. Um, and then if you want to hang out with me, um, you can find me through all those things. But if you just take my name and put it into any social media. It’s just my first and last name: trevordevage – Instagram, Twitter (I don’t even use Twitter anymore and does that thing is Twitter still thing?

Rich Birch — Is that a thing – exactly.

Trevor DeVage — Um Facebook, TikTok all the all that. We’re on all the places. Um I got a website as well. Um but I don’t care nearly much about my stuff is just what the kingdom’s doing, so if you want to follow along with Pantano, man, pantano.church is the place to go.

Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much, Trevor. Appreciate you being here today.

Trevor DeVage — Thanks my man.

Leaning in on the Important (& Potentially Awkward) Conversations Around Women in Leadership at Your Church with Lisa Penberthy

Rich Birch — Thu, 04 May 2023 08:44:00 +0000

Thanks for joining us on the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Lisa Penberthy, a church leader and consultant with 20 years of experience and an M.Div and MBA in nonprofit management. She is currently serving as the COO at Dannah Investment Group and is passionate about stewarding people’s callings as well as church resources.

Are you a church leader looking to encourage and empower more women to step into their callings in your ministry? Listen in as Lisa provides practical coaching on identifying blind spots, communicating personal boundaries, and advocating for next generation women leaders.

Identify what’s missing. // When it comes to women in church leadership, we tend to look at the theological side of the conversation. However, practically speaking we need to recognize that it comes down to helping women fulfill their callings. If you’re fully supportive of them, then the question becomes, how do you help empower them by removing obstacles and providing practical support? Start by looking at the blind spots in your church. If none of your executive leaders are women then you’re missing part of the conversation. Pay attention to how many times women have spoken from the stage or given a message at your church.
Circle back. // Women may identify that they have a ministry calling but aren’t ready to step into it due to their current family responsibilities. Male leaders may want to ask these women to serve in leadership, but also don’t want to put pressure on them. Remember that it’s important to circle back to these women and present them with leadership opportunities again. Come back to the conversation and hold the women accountable rather than only asking once and assuming they’ll always say no.
Build trust. // Acknowledge the tension around social interactions with male and female leaders. Each individual needs to establish personal boundaries and points of accountability in their life and leadership. Have honest conversations about those barriers so there’s a layer of trust between the male and female staff and women aren’t automatically omitted from leadership opportunities and interactions. With the right benchmarks and boundaries in place, men and women should be able to travel together or be alone in a room for confidential meetings without hesitancy. Never isolate or penalize women because of your individual struggles.
Upfront communication. // When hiring women on staff, communicate during the interview any limitations in the leadership relationship between men and women. Be forthright about personal boundaries in your leadership so the woman being interviewed can decide whether she is comfortable with them or not. If this conversation isn’t initiated by the interviewer, the woman needs to have the courage to bring it up so she will know where she might be held back in her calling.
Raising concerns. // If a situation occurs that causes a woman to no longer feel comfortable with current boundaries, she has to be brave enough to raise the concern. It doesn’t have to be with her superior, but she needs to come forward. It can be with the church’s HR or the administrative people who handle paychecks, or even the advisory board. She should find the person that is safe to talk to and have a conversation early after any incidents happen.
Encourage upcoming leaders. // Advocate for next generation women leaders in every way you can to encourage them in their work. Invest in upcoming female leaders by giving them opportunities, such as internships, to show their potential. Observe them in their own environments and give them increased responsibility.
Discipling women. // Most churches have more women in the congregation than men. But if there are more women in the seats and fewer women on the platform, then we’re not doing a good job of reaching and discipling the people God has brought to us. We should see more women in leadership throughout all areas of the church, not just the nursery and children’s ministry.

To connect with Lisa you can meet her at the XP Summit on May 16 & 17, 2023 or you can email her.

Thank You for Tuning In!

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Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Chemistry Staffing

One of the things that they never teach you in seminary is when to move on from your current church. Over the last couple of years, we have been having a TON of conversations about this with pastors all over the United States. Of all the ministry decisions you make, leaving your position will be the toughest.

Download this two-in-one resource that walks you through the decision-making process.

Episode Transcript

Rich Birch — Hey, friends welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Super excited for today’s conversation with my new friend, Lisa Penberthy. She is just incredible leader that you’re going to want to listen in and lean in with. Ah she was executive pastor of operations at San Diego Rock – if you don’t know this church of fantastic ah organization. She’s been a church leader and consultant with twenty plus years of experience. Has both an M.Div and MBA, which is fantastic, in nonprofit management. Ah she currently is serving as the COO at Dana Investment group. She’s passionate really about helping churches and leaders steward their calling and church resources. Ah, Lisa welcome to the show. So glad that you’re here.

Lisa Penberthy — Rich, thanks for the invite. It’s great to be with you.

Rich Birch — Yeah I’m so honored that you are giving us some time today. This is going to be good. Fill out the picture there. What did I miss? What else do we want people to know? I know it’s so hard to, you know, how do I you know what what what do I want people to know about me.

Lisa Penberthy — What I want people to know about me? Um I believe in the local church. I have served in every capacity of the local church, minus a men’s pastor. So I started out ministry um, as a volunteer junior high youth leader, but a paid janitor. So I was paid to clean the toilets and I volunteered to serve the junior highers, and boy, some days it felt the same.

Rich Birch — Oh Gosh. Oh my goodness. That’s hilarious. I love that. So good.

Lisa Penberthy — But yeah, so so those are local church is where it’s at for me. I’ve served in various capacities at denominational levels. So I’m ordained minister with the Foursquare Church.

Rich Birch — Oh great.

Lisa Penberthy — And served by pastoring local church years were mainly in the Foursquare Church. And then I served our denomination both at what Foursquare would call the district level that serves the local church directly, and then the national level that serves all of the US churches.

Rich Birch — I love it.

Lisa Penberthy — So it’s an honor to serve twenty plus years in those capacities.

Rich Birch — Yeah I love it.

Lisa Penberthy — And then I love to teach.

Rich Birch — Oh good. Nice. And where where where…

Lisa Penberthy — So I’ve…

Rich Birch — And that’s been both in the local church context and other contexts? Tell us about that.

Lisa Penberthy — Yeah, so Life Pacific University and and then Ministry Institute. So Rock School of Ministry when I was at the Rock and I currently teach at Western Ministry Institute which is a Foursquare Ministry Institute.

Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Well I’m so honored that you would be on today to to tackle this issue particularly. Ah so what we’re talking about today really is how can we as church churches and church leaders, people who are charged with leading the church, really ah, encourage, raise up ah particularly female, women leaders in our our churches. I think my assumption is that there are people that are listening in today that although cognitively might agree, hey they look around their circles and they’re like there’s just way too many guys here; there have to be more women that ah, that should be leading in our context. But there must be something that’s going on that we’re not encouraging women to take it in these steps. Or we’re providing we’re kind of there’s some something that we’re doing that’s not working right. And I want to I want to, you offered, which I appreciate to help us kind of think about these issues today, and we want to kind of wrestle through that.

Rich Birch — So what should we be thinking about? What when when we think about this issue, let’s assume we’re in that picture we look around and we say but there’s just there’s just too many guys here. How can we, not that guys are bad, but how can we encourage ah you know more women to lead within our context?

Lisa Penberthy — Yeah, great question and my focus is really practical in in just identifying what’s missing. When you sit down at a table, you’ve gathered people to make decisions and you look around and you don’t see any women. Um it it begs the question are we missing part of the conversation? And so starting out really practical is looking around the table – who’s at the tables that you go to? We tend to focus on the theological side in the conversation. But really we need to get beyond that and look at the practical aspect of um seeing women fulfill their calling. So if women know that they’re called, you’ve already determined that that’s where you stand because that’s your belief, then then let’s figure out how to do it.

Lisa Penberthy — So the practical ways look around the table are there women look at your platform, scroll through all of your um, Sunday sermons that you have put on your website and count how many times a woman has spoken. If you can’t find any times then you’ve probably missed the mark. If you’re only seeing it once or twice, but you’ve had 20 plus guest speakers, then you’ve probably fallen a little short now.

Lisa Penberthy — Now if if the primary speaker is just the lead pastor and no one else covers the pulpit then it is what it is. But if you bring guests in for your pulpit, if you bring guests in to speak, and you don’t see any women, then you should probably look a little deeper on your bench.

Rich Birch — Love that. I love that just even really practical, you know, try that. That’s a potential blind Spot we might have. Is that we’re not um, you know we’re not calling in, you know, female guest speakers when we you know when we are bringing in guest guest speakers. That’s great. What would be some other common and blind spots that you see when in churches that would hold ah conviction that would say, yeah we were we’re open to women women leading, but there’s just like a you know there’s just a blind spot that we just don’t see. Are any others that come up?

Lisa Penberthy — Absolutely. Um, male leaders default to ah they need to be in the home. And not because they think that that not because that’s their belief, but because they feel that a woman will say no. And so they don’t even ask women because the woman is focused on their young children or they’re ah really focused on their family, they’re the soccer mom. And so they they don’t want to interrupt or they have spoken to a woman in the past that has said, I’m really busy now – come back to me, and they don’t come back.

Lisa Penberthy — So a really simple way to do that is when you identify a woman who is strong and called, and you know that um ministry speaking, teaching is in their future, and they say, you know what? I really want the first five years of my kids to focus on the first five years. There’s nothing wrong with that. But what they really need is that person that circles back after the first five years and says okay, five years is up. Let’s talk again. So coming back to the conversation; hold the women accountable. They’re the ones that said, I see that call in my life; I just want to wait. And so finding that balance. And really, that’s not everyone. When I started going, for me, it was this is my priority. My husband and I waited 10 years for the kids because I wanted to go after my calls so that when the kids came along, I knew the difference of my calling as a mother, and my calling as a pastor. Because they are two very different things that I know God has prepared me for.

Rich Birch — Um, love that. I know, um, so first of all I appreciate you pushing us on this. We want to keep leaning in here and finding ways that we could be creating undo barriers that that we shouldn’t you know that aren’t there. I know for me one of them that I’ve seen in my own leadership is the um is the unexpected kind of social stuff. Hey we’re going, hey let’s go out for lunch. Or hey we’re going to you know, whatever go to a game together. You know those kinds of things. Ah, talk us through ah well is that a problem am I being anxious about stuff I shouldn’t be anxious about? Or is there is there a real issue there that we need to think about?

Lisa Penberthy — So this is a tension point. And everybody has to individually determine where they sit. For me, I have traveled the world with male colleagues because it’s a part of what I’m called to do.

Rich Birch – Yep.

Lisa Penberthy — And my gender doesn’t limit my calling. My choices can limit it. My actions can limit it. But my gender shouldn’t. And so I have put in personal benchmarks and points of accountability accountability into my life and leadership that affords me opportunity to sit in a meeting room with just me and one male. Um, travel the world with just me and one male. Um, but that’s because of the things I’ve put in place for my accountability. And I know my weaknesses and that’s not my weakness. And now I won’t know the male’s weakness. And so open conversations become important. Knowing who you’re working with, knowing who you’re traveling with, um, putting that layer of trust in place becomes important.

Lisa Penberthy — Um, so so navigating those pieces is really important. So if there is a hesitancy on a male’s end of being in a room um with a woman because I’ve I’ve experienced that. And I had to ask a question of a male that said, is this because you don’t trust me, or you don’t trust yourself? And so and then that conversation was had. And then I took it ah a layer deeper and said, okay you trust me, you trust yourself. Is this a commitment to your spouse because I want to honor those things, but I also don’t want those things to keep us from being effective in the mission. And so let’s put it all out on the table. Never isolate a woman or keep from having a lunch with the opposite sex because of that barrier. Have the conversations up front. Because the reality in today’s day and age is you don’t know who’s sitting across from the table. You could have a transgender across the table. You could have um someone ah that doesn’t that is attracted to same sex and you don’t know and so…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Lisa Penberthy — …having a male and a male at the table is no different today than having a male and a female.

Rich Birch — Right.

Lisa Penberthy — Now if this is your staff and someone you know then there should also be that same level of trust. You’re trusting where it’s at. So putting in your marks of accountability. And if this is an area you struggle with as a leader, you need to be vulnerable enough to say, hey I need to do it different. This isn’t about you. This is about me. Own up to your stuff. And so so it’s a real tension, and everybody has different markers and that’s the reality of the conversation is your personal barriers and obstacles, not the large picture gender barriers and obstacles, because we’re isolating all women because of our individual struggles.

Rich Birch — Yeah, okay, so this is really good, Lisa. I appreciate this. Can you give us some coaching here. So I um, so let’s assume I’m I’m a leader, I’m a male leader who does have conviction around saying hey I one of my own personal convictions is um, I I don’t want to meet alone. I won’t I won’t do the lunch I won’t that’s with with a a female. I don’t know how let’s say I don’t know how to say that without it sounding like I think you’re going to try to seduce me. Or I think I’m going to you know I’m like totally turned on by you. Like I don’t know how to how do I say that in a way. What’s how what can give us some language.

Lisa Penberthy — Right.

Rich Birch — Give us some coaching around how do we use that language? What what would you what would you how would you coach coach us on that?

Lisa Penberthy — Absolutely. First, this conversation should come out in the interview process.

Rich Birch — Okay, good, good, good.

Lisa Penberthy — The woman coming in should know this before. She should know that there’s going to be limitations in the leadership relationship.

Rich Birch — Very good. Okay, good.

Lisa Penberthy — So this should come out in the interview process. And the comfort level of that, whether it comes from the senior leader making the hire, or it comes from the ah HR admin whoever does the hiring process. Either way, that’s where it should come out. The the female leader should not be blindsided…

Rich Birch — Right.

Lisa Penberthy — …um in the role six months in, discovering everybody else got a one-on-one. Everybody else goes to lunch one-on-one, but I don’t. Why? So that’s the wrong time to find out, and the wrong conversation in which to find out. So my first recommendation in this, have that conversation in the interview process. Let the woman make the decision to say, you know what? I’m still all in. I’m okay with that. Here’s the boundaries. Let’s work through this. Um, so what to say and how to say it is is really just coming forth being forthright and saying I have my personal boundaries and leadership, and here they are. You wouldn’t hesitate to say um I have date night with my spouse and I leave at five o’clock on Thursday. So if you’re not going to hesitate to say, I’ve got to be at my kids’ baseball game on Tuesday so I’m leaving. If you’re not going to hesitate on those things, then you need to not hesitate on this conversation. Because this conversation impacts someone else’s calling. So you need to be even more forthright with it. And and the comfort level comes in all the time. That’s that’s always a question. That’s always well I’m not comfortable because then as you said it could really spark a, I’m coming on to you. That’s when you have that other person. That’s why the interview’s a great place because typically the interview involves multiple people. So then that can be had um in a group setting. So so those questions, and as a woman I encourage you to ask the question so that it’s brought out.

Lisa Penberthy — So in interviews that I’ve had I’ve asked, what’s your position? Where will I see it? Where will I be held back that other people aren’t? Is there opportunity? And so as a woman I would say ask the question. It is you need to know what you’re getting into because you can’t get upset for a question you didn’t ask.

Lisa Penberthy — And on the the male leader side I would say if you know that you have hard and fast boundaries and rules, share them upfront. Um, if if you don’t have windows in your doors in your office, get those windows in. Because I wholeheartedly believe every door should have a window on it.

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Lisa Penberthy — But I also believe once that window’s there, you can shut the door and have a conversation. And so um, so it’s the balance of what have you done to give space for gender mentoring gender leadership conversations to happen. What have you done to make space for that? And what have you done to put in the obstacles? So if you haven’t put that window in, that’s an obstacle that you’ve put in. You’ve chosen that. Because now you have to leave the door open now those confidential conversations – I mean in my role as an Operations Pastor, all the confidential conversations are there. HR questions and conversations. Finance…

Rich Birch — Yes, so true.

Lisa Penberthy — …budgets, layoffs. All of those are closed door conversations that I can’t have unless there’s that window because that’s one of my boundaries. There there needs to be a window or at least a window somewhere that people can walk by. So if it’s not in the door, you know, there’s the window in the door for where the assistant accesses or however, that works but somewhere there is that layer of accountability there.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I appreciate that. You know I do fair amount of coaching with churches where I’m on site and just recently I was at a church where there weren’t windows in their office doors. And I found it surprising I was like oh well, this still exists. Like I was like um and there was a fairly new building and as you actually we we brought it Up. We talked I talked about it. Because I was like, yeah, how does that like you know and so they choose to do the door open thing. And then I asked that exact same question which is like okay so what happens when there’s a you know a conversation that you can have the door open for um because of the nature of it. And it kind of got into this like, well ah it doesn’t really happen. And I was like, okay well, that’s Interesting. It’s just interesting, right?

Lisa Penberthy — Yeah, yeah.

Rich Birch — It’s interesting to see how people you know, operate. Um, so what about on that you know what about on the balance side. Let’s say that or that you know, kind of the other piece of that that puzzle. Let’s say I am a female leader who is um, you know, um, you know sometimes our convictions our um, our comfortable the way we our comfortableness changes in scenarios. Life is different maybe than when we started. Ah, how would you encourage a female leader to try to speak to this, if their own personal conviction has changed on this. It’s like hey you know I was comfortable but I’m not I’m no longer comfortable. Um, the the reason why I flag this is because there are too many churches where people have been taken advantage of. And so how do we create um, you know, ah a boundary there that’s reasonable. Um, yeah, talk us through that. What does that look like?

Lisa Penberthy — Yeah, so in this area, it’s true. They do, the the position changes. It’s they’re they’re comfortable when they’re hired and and they’re in um, the the blissful state, and then something happens something a a statement’s made, a conversations had, and it changes the dynamics of the the comfort level. It changes the dynamics of the the leadership relationship, and so something has to shift. Um, for for women they have to be brave enough and and this is hard to even say, but they have to be brave enough to raise the concern. Now they don’t have to raise the concern to their superior. That’s not where the conversation usually starts. They need to raise the concern um, with within a peer context, within HR. I know most churches don’t have HR so that’s ah, that’s a hard statement to say. But but within that place like who writes your paycheck? That that technically is your HR person if your church is small and doesn’t have HR. Who writes the paycheck because that’s the administrative person that’s balancing labor laws. So let’s let’s put a little little technically. If that’s the person writing the paycheck then they’re the ones that have to know the labor laws. So that’s the person that I would send you to?

Lisa Penberthy — Um if your church is super small and that’s all done through the senior pastor, then there has to be a church council…

Rich Birch — Right.

Lisa Penberthy — …an advisory board, something that is bringing the leadership structure. And and you don’t have to go to all of them, but find the one person that’s safe. Find that person that you can talk to to help have that conversation, or to go with you to have that conversation. Because sometimes that line was crossed and accountability needs to be put in place. And sometimes that line was crossed out of ignorance – an ignorance statement, a really unfortunate illustration in a sermon. It could be that simple.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Lisa Penberthy — Ah, that the line is crossed and that that comfort is lost. And so find that person to go to and have the conversation and ah appear or someone that holds your leader accountable. Those are the best go-tos to have that conversation with. And if there is still the comfort level to have the conversation um, have it early. And having it early means um, being brave enough to say, I have a concern…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Lisa Penberthy — …and I don’t know where I’m landing on this, but let’s figure this out together. You know, going back to the the sermon illustration, you said something in your sermon Sunday that makes me uncomfortable. And had you said that one on one with me, I would have had to leave the room.

Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, and that’s ah

Lisa Penberthy — And so approaching it that way.

Rich Birch — Yeah, in some ways I feel bad that I’ve steered the conversation in this direction because I don’t want to inject I think sometimes we it’s like we we come to the worst case scenario. But I do I do think we have to talk about it and I think as executive leaders who are leading particularly within the church, this is one of those areas where, and this has been a growth area for me over these last couple of years. I I realized, man, I need to be really clear with our team who is the advocate that they should go to if I as their leader or if they’re particular leaders to people that lead them do something say something that is that is inappropriate, that’s off off bounds. We have to be as clear as that with our people.

Lisa Penberthy — Yes.

Rich Birch — This is who you talk to…

Lisa Penberthy — Yes.

Rich Birch — …this is the advocate that is there on your behalf…

Lisa Penberthy — Yes.

Rich Birch — …um, that is outside of you know, that and that’s their job there. And you have to you have to identify somebody, you have to make it super obvious, say this is how you talk to them. Um, and you know that’s been a growth area for me even these in these years because I’m like, man, we can’t I don’t want someone to wonder in that moment. I’m not even sure to talk to about this, particularly if it’s about me…

Lisa Penberthy — Absolutely.

Rich Birch — …if I’m the person that ultimately this whole thing leads up to, man, I have to create, even more so, I have to create really clear ah, really clear lines there. Um, so another area of this is our own thoughts and beliefs and approaches to how we manage our home life versus how we manage in ah our leadership scenario at church. I think there sometimes can be a tension there where it’s like how we’ve decided how my spouse and I have decided to manage how decisions are made um, you know somebody ultimately has the tie-breaking vote. You know we’ve talked about that in our own marriage…

Lisa Penberthy — Yes.

Rich Birch — …who has that tie-breaking vote. Ah, but then maybe I and maybe even unwittingly, unknowingly import that into my leadership at church. Have you seen that before? Talk to talk us through that.

Lisa Penberthy — Absolutely. So there is a big difference between your theological position and your marital preference. And and in that what I’m saying is in your theological position, you either lean mutualist, also known as egalitarian, or hierarchy also known as complementarian. So mutualist, which I prefer because we live and lead and are married and serve in a mutual submission. So mutualist. So in a mutualist relationship your role at the church and your role at the home may look very similar. However, um your role at home may look more hierarchy, and you know what it’s it’s okay because it’s your preference in your home. You you know what you believe, you know what the bible points you toward, but in your home you’re like, hey this is how we want to live our life. We want um the the husband to to be the decision maker. And I wouldn’t go as far as saying the head of the house because then we go in a whole different conversation and that’s not what we’re addressing. But the decision maker the one that has the final say when there’s a tie. The husband’s a tiebreaker. In in our home when there’s a tie the person who has the most knowledge and understanding of the topic is the tiebreaker. It’s not a default. It’s not, well you’re the male so make the decision. It’s well you know more about this so you make the final decision. So you know, I’ll I’ll use a very lighthearted, when my husband and I are talking about sushi, he is always going to make the decision. He knows, you know…

Rich Birch — He’s the sushi expert. Love it.

Lisa Penberthy — Exactly. But when when we’re talking about Mexican food, I’m gonna be the one that makes a decision. I grew up in Southern California; he grew up in Portland, Oregon. I’m going to make the final decision. So…

Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah, that’s true. That’s true. Love it.

Lisa Penberthy — …so it’s about knowledge, understanding, and experience in in a mutual relationship. Mutual submission means the best person, the best equipped makes the the decision when there’s a tie. Um in and so in your preference if if in your marriage it’s like it doesn’t matter that I know more about Mexican, I’m always going to default to him, and I’m going to stick to the food because it makes it more friendly conversation for everyone, um, it’s always going to default to the husband. That’s okay; that’s your marital preference. It’s not your theological position if you truly are um, a mutualist and egalitarian belief status. This is about the preference in your home.

Lisa Penberthy — And they’re different. And and women get really hung up on that because they find themselves wanting a spouse like that. It’s you know the fairy tale. It’s the prince charming. It’s what they’ve been taught to desire. And really they don’t even know if that’s their desire until they’re in it. But it’s what we’ve been taught. I grew up wanting princesses and castles and then I really said actually I don’t. And my childhood dream adulthood was overseeing an orphanage all by myself because I didn’t need anyone else to help me do it.

Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.

Lisa Penberthy — So, you know, it’s the balance. Um, and so everybody has to find that. So really, that’s that’s your preference and not necessarily your theological position. And being able to separate those out really helps you better understand where you land in leadership overall. And as um, the other side of the conversation, if you are hierarchy complementarian then all aspects of your life will align that way. Then your home and your ministry and and how you seek a job really will take you in that direction.

Rich Birch — Right right. Okay, cool, interesting. That’s great. Super helpful for sure as we think as we try to you know discern you know, pull those those two aspects of our lives apart and try to think critically about that. So so helpful. Appreciate that.

Rich Birch — When you think about um, particularly next generation women leaders, what can we do as leaders who maybe are, you know… So I’m thinking about executive pastor, leadin’ at a church, a female or male who’s like, hey I want to make sure that young leaders, particularly, are getting opportunity. Because it seems like a part of where this goes off the tracks is like very early on it’s like, you know, women coming out of school or like very early on it’s like we’re not creating the right opportunities. Any thoughts on that? What can we do on that front?

Lisa Penberthy — Um, advocate for ’em in every way possible.

Rich Birch — Okay, great. Yep.

Lisa Penberthy — So um I have had interns in my office space, whether it’s at the church, whether it’s in the corporate world, interns in my office raising up the next generation. It’s one of the reasons why I teach it’s because I believe in the next generation of leaders. I teach as adjunct professor because I want to know that they still exist. And I want to know that there’s still interest because the next generation isn’t as interested there as um, as my generation. They’re they’re not the gung-ho um, grind. Then we skip from the millennials to Gen Z who are back to the grind. They’re like I want the job, I want I want the driver’s license. Look at the millennials, they’re like I’ll get my driver’s license one day. And so the balance of that. So being with younger, um younger leaders became really important to me.

Lisa Penberthy — So how do you pour into them? First hang out with them. Know that they exist, know that they have something to offer. Because if all you’re seeing is kids’ noses in screens, you are not going to see the potential of what they have to offer. Give them opportunity to show their potential. And for for women specifically, and there’s many times me growing up in different roles and capacities as a woman that I was overlooked because it was, hey let’s go to the golf course. Hey, let’s go to the basketball court. And it wasn’t invited because those were hangouts. Let’s find the potential. Let’s have a conversation. Ah well there are women that play golf. I’m not one of them because my golf game stinks. My dad will tell you firsthand. Ah.

Rich Birch — I love it. Yeah, love it. Yes

Lisa Penberthy — I have attempted. But yeah, but but there are different ways to do that.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Lisa Penberthy — So find those places where you can hang out. And of course you know a male taking just one female to go play golf isn’t reality, so the pickup game of basketball is probably your better bet. And there are women that play basketball. And we automatically think that… we automatically skip over the invite for the woman.

Rich Birch — Right.

Lisa Penberthy — So we have interns and you invite all the male interns. I’ve I’ve watched it happen in the offices that I’ve been… all the male interns were invited to go to the baseball games. Like guess what? I watch baseball every day. Literally every day. Whether it’s my kids playing, or the Dodgers playing I watch every day.

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Lisa Penberthy — So um, so so those are just opportunities. Find those places where you can see the next generation of leaders, and women specifically, in their own environment. See what their potential is.

Lisa Penberthy — Go where they’re at instead of taking them where you’re at. And so when you invest in the next generation, you really want to take the time to listen to them. And part of listening is observing.

Rich Birch — Love it. Yes.

Lisa Penberthy — See how they interact. See how they naturally lead in environments and then you have that follow up conversation that says, hey when I was watching you the other day at the basketball on the basketball court I saw you take charge. I saw this in you. So stirring up that potential in them really ignites them. And then specifically when it becomes the gender issue, go where they’re at. Find out what what they’re doing. And I’m not saying go get your hair done with them. I’m saying, go find, you know, if they’re on the volleyball court, then pick up volleyball instead of golf. So go where they’re at.

Rich Birch — I love that. So good. Um, when you think about the like do you think the trend in this is heading in the right direction or the wrong direction? Like do you what’s your kind of ah, you know, your assessment on this – are we getting better as a church or or not? I can’t discern that.

Lisa Penberthy — Um, we are not getting better as a church.

Rich Birch — Right.

Lisa Penberthy — And here’s the unfortunate thing…

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Lisa Penberthy — …but we’re not getting better as a society. So I’m currently in an executive women’s leadership program at Cornell University, and the statistics there are heartbreaking because our society is reflecting the same. And the the thing for me is the church has a mandate. Society doesn’t. So as a church we should be the front leaders. We should be the frontrunners. We should be out there saying, we empower everyone because the Kingdom and God’s people are more important than our bias on genders.

Rich Birch — So good. So good.

Lisa Penberthy — And this is not a salvific matter. This does not determine our salvation.

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Lisa Penberthy — So let’s go make this happen, and get out on the battlefield where salvation does matter.

Rich Birch — Right.

Lisa Penberthy — Let’s reach the people where it does make a difference. And so so our trends are still kind of holding steady with less women right around that 45 mark which is better than where it was back in the day. So right around that 45 mark is where we’ll see you know, depending on which statistic anywhere from 45 to 48 of women. Um, but if if you flip it and look at the other aspects of women, and we have more educated women than we do men.

Rich Birch — Yes, yep, yep.

Lisa Penberthy — More more women seek higher degrees but they’re doing all of this to seek the opportunities. Because you have to go after the degrees because a woman won’t be looked at without the degree, whereas it male would be. And so um, so women are going after those degrees so that they have an opportunity. They have a standing chance of well, I don’t have the experience because it wasn’t extended to me, but I have the education. And so finding that balance, getting that education has helped women, but the trends are not in our favor right now.

Rich Birch — Interesting.

Lisa Penberthy — And so that that is what I’m hoping people can discover even just in our conversation is there are ways to empower women. There are ways to advocate for them, and to release them, and to see them um take leadership roles that they haven’t had opportunity in the past. And we can see those numbers reflect those decisions.

Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. Um so this might be another unfair question in this area. This is one of the great I think one of the great ironies of the modern church is so many churches I’ve been to if you were to stand back on a Sunday morning or a weekend service and look out over the, you know, over the audience, congregation, whatever you call it in your particular slice of christianity, um, you know that’s 60 maybe 70% women ah 30, 40% men, um and and some even higher some 80/20 you know it. It definitely skews. In fact, I think and one ah hundred percent of the churches I ever visit it always skews towards there being more women than men. That’s like a whole other topic of conversation. But then at the same time the leadership skews the other way. Um, where it’s you know, primarily men um, leading. I don’t even know if I have a question. I’m like what is happening here?

Lisa Penberthy — Truth.

Rich Birch — Like what is happening here? Like what what is all of that? Again I realize it’s an unfair question because it’s like it’s this giant issue that’s in front of us. How do you reflect on that you’ve obviously thought about these issues.

Lisa Penberthy — Absolutely.

Rich Birch — So you know what what do you think? What do you think?

Lisa Penberthy — Yeah, so so seeing that, that very thing everything that you said I agree with. It’s the trends. It’s the truth. The numbers will show you. I mean every church that I’ve been into and I’ve been on a lot because I’ve worked a denomination where I that was my job was to visit churches. So um, there are more women in the seats. And if there are more women in the seats and fewer women on the platform, then we’re not reaching and discipling the women that God has brought to us, the people that God has brought to us.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Lisa Penberthy — And so if we truly are raising up and discipling those that God has brought to us, then we should see more women in leadership. We should see more women leading even the simplest of things – our discipleship classes, and and our our trainings that we do um. And yet we oftentimes limit women to our children’s ministry, which ah looking back at my childhood, my favorite ah children’s pastor was a male. And my favorite Sunday school teacher was my grandfather who was obviously a male. And and not because well partly because he was my grandfather, but because he was full of wisdom and all of our friends loved him. He was funny. You know all of those things that you’d hope for. And if if the male voice is absent in the seats, how absent is it in the home. And who do our children need to hear from?

Rich Birch — Yeah.

sa Penberthy — But yet all of our Sunday school teachers are women.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Fascinating. It’s yeah this is ah this is one of the, yeah, we you know didn’t even get into that the stereotyping of women into you know, serving in, you know, just in in “just” I say in quotes…

Lisa Penberthy — Yes.

Rich Birch — …in you know kids ministry areas. Um, that’s like ah you know that’s like, again, a whole other can of worms. Or in some movements you know you’ll have women are allowed to ah to go overseas and do roles with mission organizations.

Lisa Penberthy — Yeah, do everything.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that they are would not be allowed to do in the exact same organization, you know, on this, man, that’s just sad.

Lisa Penberthy — Yes.

Rich Birch — I’m like how are we still living in that world? That’s that’s crazy to me. Well this is…

Lisa Penberthy — It is an unfortunate dynamic.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Lisa, this has been an incredible conversation. I really appreciate you, you know hoping our… Listen, friends, our hope was to to to continue to talk about this issue, to raise this for us to think about it. Again, my assumption is that there are leaders that are listening in today that see all those problems, and are like I see all that. But it’s like hey, what steps can we take today? Give us a kind of final word as we wrap up. What what would you say to a leader that’s listening in that says, yeah I see all that stuff. What what could be a step or two that we should be taking, even practically this week…

Lisa Penberthy — Yeah.

ich Birch — …ah to try to create better, you know, equality equity in our organizations?

Lisa Penberthy — First I would say lean into the discomfort. It’s unfamiliar territory for most leaders and you got to just lean into it. And then I would say set your own personal boundaries. And don’t penalize others because of your boundaries. Make them your own. Own up to them and make them yours and don’t penalize others. It’s very easy to have boundaries that penalize people from their calling.

Lisa Penberthy — And then communicate. Make sure people know your boundaries. Make sure the woman that you’re inviting onto staff knows that there will be limits if you’re putting limitations in there. And if there aren’t limits, then live up to what you’ve committed to.

Rich Birch — Yes, love it. Thank you so much, Lisa. If people want to track with you, we’re going to be at the XP Summit here coming up in very short times.

Lisa Penberthy — Yes.

Rich Birch — So hopefully folks are listening in that are coming to that we’ll get a chance to connect. But if people want to connect with you, track with you, where do we want to send them online?

Lisa Penberthy — Oh that’s a great question. I’m in the process of launching my website.

Rich Birch — Nice.

Lisa Penberthy — Um, but ah and we have not secured the domain because my husband’s one step behind me.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s okay. Love it. All good.

Lisa Penberthy — So um, but ah, but they they can reach me at lisa@penberthy.rocks

Rich Birch — Perfect.

Lisa Penberthy — So that’s my first name lisa@penberthy.rocks and that is my ministry address.

Rich Birch — Love it. Perfect! Thanks so much, Lisa. I appreciate being here. Thank you for helping us think through and wrestle through these issues today.

Lisa Penberthy — Absolutely. Thanks, Rich.

Being a Clarity Champion on a Senior Leadership Team at a Fast Growing Church with Kasey Husen

Rich Birch — Thu, 20 Apr 2023 08:44:00 +0000

Thanks for joining this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Kasey Husen, the Executive Director of Communicatons and Events at Crossroads Christian Church in Corona, California.

Kasey talks with us about the importance of having a Communications Director at the senior leadership level at your church. Beyond branding and marketing, Kasey shares how they can create engagement and clarity to help your church win.

The role in the church. // Early on in her time on staff at Crossroads, Kasey served as admin to the worship pastor. From her seat she continually observed a problem with announcements not creating the engagement desired, as well as their cutting into the sermon time. Ultimately she was able to bring organization to that area, eventually leading to her becoming the Executive Director of Communications and Events. Now her primary responsibility is to find clarity in all things and make it transferable to the staff to take action.
Drive for clarity. // Lack of clarity is a major barrier for winning. Churches seem to naturally drift into doing a lot of things that require attention from the staff, the budget, and the congregation in order to be successful. And yet ministry leaders are disappointed with the outcomes. Kasey’s drive for clarity ensures that Crossroads and its ministry teams are winning at the goals they work toward.
Ask questions and speak up. // Kasey says that her primary role as the clarity champion on the executive team has to be fully embraced by the whole executive leadership. They all have to want to provide clarity to people outside of the room where decisions are made (ie – to other staff and congregation). The role of the communications director requires a lot of question-asking, speaking up, and acting as air traffic controller. They are often the canary in the coal mine and see the needs of all of the different ministries within the organization.
Part of the senior leadership team. // For most churches, the executive team is the one making the strategic decisions each week. But a lot of the leaders forget that the conversations and decisions being made in those meetings result in the need to collaborate with other ministry leaders outside of that room. Having your communications director in your decision-making meetings can give you an early opportunity to talk through the barriers you need to address to get the people outside the meeting to embrace your decisions.
Building trust. // Managing the challenge of what to announce from the stage is a continual tension to navigate. Ask questions of your senior leadership to discern what’s most important to them and what they’ll be most disappointed about if there’s a lack of engagement. Communications directors need to learn to lead up to the executive leadership in the church. But Kasey stresses that before providing critical feedback, first you need to build relationships and trust, reiterating that you are on their side and are committed to supporting their God-given vision for the church.
High engagement opportunities. // In Crossroads’ pursuit of clarity and helping their teams hit their overarching goals, the church works to pair ministry opportunities with major initiatives or messages each week. This often creates the highest engagement because the announcement is getting multiple impressions and moving the hearts of the congregation to action in multiple ways throughout the service.

You can learn more about Crossroads Christian Church at www.crossroadschurch.com and email Kasey. Or find her on Instagram at KaseyHusen.

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Episode Transcript

Rich Birch — Well, hey, everybody! Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Super excited for today’s conversation – you know every week we try to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you and today is no example is no exception to that. There’s a perfect example of that trying to say two things at once. Ah, Kasey Husen – I’m super excited to have her ah on the podcast. She is the communications the Executive Director of Communications and Events at a fantastic church Crossroads Christian Church located in Corona, California — one of the fastest growing churches in the country. You, if you’re a longtime listener, you might remember earlier ah, that was maybe a month ago six weeks ago we had Taleah Murray on and she was just fantastic, fantastic episode. And so I said, Taleah, who else should we have? And she said, you should talk to Kasey. So so glad to have Kasey on. Welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.

Kasey Husen — Thank you for having me, Rich. Super excited to talk with you today.

Rich Birch — Oh I’m looking forward to this as well. Communication is so critically important to all of our churches, and so to be able to tap your expertise today is just incredible. So fill out the picture for folks that don’t know kind of talk to us about Crossroads, kind of fill in that picture a little bit. What… tell us about the church and then tell us about your role there.

Kasey Husen — Yeah, so as Taleah shared earlier in the the podcast you did with her, our church is about 130 years old. That’s very unique. And so we’re a multi-generational church located in a beautiful area of Corona, which is located in Southern California. Um, and so kind of funny thing, I have grown up here in this church. This is…

Rich Birch — Oh fun!

Kasey Husen — …Ah yeah, although I’ve done a couple different roles in ministry here, I have really spent my entire life either going to the school or attending the church. It’s a huge part of my story and I really, ah through teachers at our school and then ultimately church leaders here, discovered a lot of my different gifting. My parents were not necessarily um disciples of Christ and raising me. It was actually my grandmother who said, Hey we should send her to a private christian school. And that’s how I ended up here. Um, and my parents worked full time so I spent a lot of time on this campus. And I credit a lot of where I am today, ah, both spiritually and professionally, with the way that people here have developed me into this place…

Rich Birch — So good.

Kasey Husen — …and helped me really recognize my gifts and using my my my gifts to ah to a purpose within the church. And that’s still the same today. For so many people who are part of this church, we are really passionate about the next generation. If you were to take in one of our services online or to come to our campus, that’s just something that you cannot miss about Crossroads.

Rich Birch — So good. Well this is great, and and talk to us about the role Executive Director of Communications and Events kind of frame that up. Help us understand kind of what does that look like. What ah when how do you describe that you you meet someone and they say, so what do you do at the church. What do you say to them?

Kasey Husen — Yeah, well I can give you a little bit of background on how I got here. It’s a little bit funny.

Rich Birch — Sure.

Kasey Husen — Um you know, ah I’ve been in communications now as the Communications Director for the last 11 years at Crossroads. But prior to that I was actually asked to join the staff as an admin to our worship pastor. So ah, you know prior to that, like I said, I had served in this church for pretty much my whole life. But I really had no idea what church staff members could possibly do, working on a church staff for 40 hours a week. No I laugh at that of course.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Kasey Husen — I know most of us are working more than 40 hours a week…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Kasey Husen — …on really important stuff. But I say this because I came in with no experience. But I really had some strong admin skills and some fresh eyes. And since so much of what our worship pastor does is in partnership with our senior pastor, I really learned a lot quickly about our culture. And I got the opportunity to have a front seat to learn our DNA and what was important to our senior pastor, simply by observing interactions that I would see in weekly meetings. One of those meetings included a debrief of the previous weekend service and a look forward to the one that was coming. And at that time we had slated about 5 minutes in our service every week for the announcements. You know, for a talking person…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Kasey Husen — …to get up there and to deliver announcements. And this funny thing happened in this meeting. I observed it for probably a year; ministry leaders would come in to that particular meeting and they would sort of pitch to give their announcement for their ministry that coming Sunday. And as far as I could tell there was really no schedule or max on how many people we could say yes to…

Rich Birch — Right.

Kasey Husen — …that would get airtime that coming weekend. So I just observed most of the time they would say yes to all of them. And we all know what happens…

Rich Birch — Right.

Kasey Husen — …in that announcement space, especially back when most of us were doing, you know, the talking experience for 5 minutes. A lot of people tuned out. They didn’t engage with any of our calls to action. And the funny thing is in the debrief portion of that meeting every week our senior pastor was chronically disappointed with the fact that he had to cut off time from his sermon, because the announcement time inevitably moved from 5 minutes…

Rich Birch — Went long.

Kasey Husen — …up toward 10 minutes.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Kasey Husen — And he’d usually be disappointed that one of the 5 things we talked about that day did not really get engagement. So, to my surprise nobody was really making this connection or tackling this problem because there was no person in this seat…

Rich Birch — It’s all happening right here in this meeting. Right here!

Kasey Husen — Exactly! I’m observing the whole thing; I’m picking up on all the patterns. And ah so eventually I told our senior pastor. I said I think I can help bring some organization to this area of the service…

Rich Birch — Love it.

Kasey Husen — …just this 5 minutes…

Rich Birch — Right.

Kasey Husen — …and create more of a win for our ministries where people would actually engage with what we’re talking about. And keep the part of the service from cutting into his messages every week.

Rich Birch — Right.

Kasey Husen — So he said yes to that, and then that eventually led to me becoming what I didn’t even know was a role in churches at the time, the Communications Director.

Rich Birch — Right.

Kasey Husen — This was just all based off of you know, instinct and so um…

Rich Birch — I see a problem. Let’s fix it. Yeah, I love it.

Kasey Husen — Exactly, exactly.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Kasey Husen — And so it really evolved from from really purely organizing that portion of the service, to really being the primary champion of clarity on our staff.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Kasey Husen — And that’s that’s really what I would say if I can name one thing um I’ve dedicated my time and responsibility to finding clarity, in all things, ah to make it transferable to our staff to take action.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. So let’s dig into that a little bit more. How has… so I think there’s too many people that are listening in that feel that pain.

Kasey Husen — Yes.

Rich Birch — They’ve been in that meeting, maybe yesterday they were in that meeting…

Kasey Husen — Yeah, right.

Rich Birch — …ah, so you know you’ve done a very good job, you know, kind of outlining that, helping us understand understand that. But maybe on unpack maybe on the back end, how has that kind of increased focus on clarity? How has that ah kind of changed your approach, or the church’s approach, to like initiatives and doing things and various tasks—all that—how how has that impacted? And then we’ll dig into some of the how.

Kasey Husen — Yeah, so I’m an enneagram three – Achiever. So accomplish thing… yes, are you with me.

Rich Birch — Yes! Love it! Enneagram threes unite!

Kasey Husen — Okay, all right.

Rich Birch — Absolutely.

Kasey Husen — I’m glad when people really embrace being an enneagram three.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Kasey Husen — So I’m an achiever, so accomplishing a goal or capitalizing on an opportunity is always a primary driver for me. But especially in church because what we’re doing really matters. And so lack of clarity is a major barrier for winning.

Kasey Husen — And I think a lot of your listeners will resonate with this, that churches seem to naturally drift into doing a lot of things that require attention from our staff, attention from our budget, attention from the congregation, all in order to be successful. But yet I see many people are chronically disappointed with the outcome…

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Kasey Husen — …of whatever we’re doing. So that is really what drives me to clarity…

Rich Birch — Yeah…

Kasey Husen — …is I want to make sure we win at the goals.

Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely drive up in outcomes and engagement.

Kasey Husen — Yes.

Rich Birch — Now talk to me about… so one of the things I find super frustrating is, you know, there’s a lot of churches say like a thousand, I—like I I see I feel like I run into this all the time—thousand, maybe maybe even a little bit bigger who they um, they approach communications as a discipline, in like ah in kind of ah in a nonprofessional way. Now some of that is because like the lead pastor, they’re good at communicating and so they think therefore “I should be good at communications.” And the example I use is like, listen when you first start your church, yeah maybe you did the finances or maybe you had like somebody else do like the bookkeeping. But then eventually you need to like hire accountants and like people who do all this stuff…

Kasey Husen — Right.

Rich Birch — …professionally, It’s the same with communications.

Kasey Husen — Yes.

Rich Birch — The church grows to the place where at a senior leadership level, you need someone who is carrying communications. Unpack that for me. I believe you have probably have the same kind of thought around that. Why is that important at a senior level, and how is it helping you drive kind of the kind of outcomes and engagement you’re looking for?

Kasey Husen — Yeah, well, um, it’s certainly true. And I think our senior I know our senior pastor would agree ah that this is imperative. In fact I talked with him before this interview just to get his feedback on, you know…

Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.

Kasey Husen — …how have you seen over us working together for 11 years in this capacity? Like what do you see is most helpful to you? and although being a clarity champion, especially with such a visionary leader is a very difficult tension to manage, he would tell you that he really has embraced that because he knows it’s for the best. I will give the disclaimer that I believe and you know my primary role as a clarity champion, especially on our executive team. It has to be fully embraced by the whole team…

Rich Birch — Right.

Kasey Husen — …that we want to provide clarity to people outside of that room – may it be our staff or our congregation. Because if we can’t agree on that, then the person in this role, especially at that level will be chronically frustrated. It requires a lot of question asking. Um you know the ability to also speak up and say where there’s some incongruency. Um, you know, maybe, and I know I wrote this somewhere and in the notes later on to talk about too is um, is that we’re often in communications really well-versed we’re kind of a neutral ministry within the the ministry teams. We’re serving so many different ministries regularly that were really in touch with their needs.

Rich Birch — Yeah, true.

Kasey Husen — And they’re really more candid with us with their feedback on things that things that um are articulated well, or things that they’re kind of hung up on or don’t make sense.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Kasey Husen — So we’re often those canaries in the coal mine that will come in and say, Hey I know at this level it all seems really clear to you and it seems like everybody should just be falling in line. Um, but we often have to be the ones to say, Hey here’s where people are a little ah stuck on this.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Kasey Husen — We might need to help remove some barriers. And certainly I don’t think that’s the the senior leaders’ propensity. I don’t think that they’re often in those conversations just by design. Um, and they’re not going to get that kind of feedback. And they’re not going to be looking at ministry the way that a Communications Director is. So they can really be an asset beyond even just the promotional side of communications.

Kasey Husen — And when I talk to a lot of executive pastors um and they ask what I do, or you know how I provide value to the executive team often I’ll hear, well we wouldn’t we don’t really devote time to talking about marketing, so I’m not sure that would work in our executive team meetings. And I’m like, wow yeah I think we need to really help people get a clear idea that yes, there’s the function of communications that often is providing you your design, and updating your website, and doing your invite cards and all of that stuff. They’re executing on branding. But the person who’s going to represent them on your executive team is really looking at achieving that level of clarity for the whole team to be able to achieve its goals.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. I was in a ah—you’ll get a kick out of this—I was in a conversation recently with a senior leader. It was like, so the senior leaders there and myself and a bunch of other people. And um, they there was like they had this poster printed up with this slogan on it that I I thought was bad. Like I was like this is not good. And um and the senior leader thought this was great.

Kasey Husen — Yeah.

Rich Birch — They were like oh isn’t this this great. And I’m looking around and I’m like I think everybody else thinks this is bad, but they’re just not saying anything.

Kasey Husen — Yes.

Rich Birch — And so then I said, I was the first one to go, and this is I’m not trying to point myself out…

Kasey Husen — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …but this is an example of the kind of thing.

Kasey Husen — Yeah.

Rich Birch — I’m like I don’t think that’s very good, and like for this reason, that reason, and that reason. And then and then everybody else piled on, oh yeah, yeah; so true, so true.

Kasey Husen — Yes.

Rich Birch — There’s there’s something about having that role of the you know the clarity champion that that’s the kind of thing that you find yourself doing. Can you talk about some examples of how, you know, championing clarity at that level at that kind of senior executive level has made a difference in kind of some of the outcomes? Kind of connect those two together. What would be some examples of that?

Kasey Husen — Yeah, definitely. Well for most churches the executive team is the one that’s making strategic decisions every week. So whether we’re preparing for a building campaign, or we’re trying to increase giving units, or getting people to Easter services, or responding to a crisis, the executive team really is like ground zero for these conversations. But what I think a lot of executive leaders forget is that um the conversations we’re having week to week and the decisions that are being made in that room, they’re going to result in the need to collaborate with other ministry leaders outside of that room.

Kasey Husen — And so like I said, your Communications Director is often the canary in the coal mine – they’re going to be the ones who are going to see the different needs of ministries um, and we’re that neutral player we consider ah, we’re serving all of the different ministries. So we’re trying to we’re getting more feedback on things that don’t make sense or do make sense. Um, so having your Comms Director in that meeting is giving you an early opportunity to really talk through the barriers that we might need to address in order for people to embrace a decision.

Kasey Husen — So um, you know, I think we can often experience ah that when we’re in a room like this, we talk about things for weeks at a time. We’re wrestling through these different things and we walk out and you know forget we haven’t done the whole context with these teams or with the congregation. And I see a lot of executive leaders get ah frustrated with the lack of engagement on their staff teams.

Rich Birch — Right.

Kasey Husen — It can almost drift into the, you know, they’re not on board type of conversation. And we have…

Rich Birch — They don’t get us. They’re not there.

Kasey Husen — Exactly.

Rich Birch — They don’t love Jesus.

Kasey Husen — Exactly. Yes.

Rich Birch — They’re they’re stiff necked sinners.

Kasey Husen — Right. Exactly.

Rich Birch — All that.

Kasey Husen — And we have to remember that the ministry staff, you know, they are over specific goals and functions within the church…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Kasey Husen — …where they’re devoting their time to, you know, a specific ministry and achieving the goals we have laid out with them for that ministry. And most of them they just need a compelling why behind the new work that we’re asking them to do, or you know, whatever it is in order to fully embrace it. I don’t really ever experience anyone combative…

Rich Birch — Right.

Kasey Husen — …about a direction that we’re going in. It’s most often the time that they just don’t have the context that we have sitting in this room for weeks really wrestling this idea to the ground. So I am often the one who’s asking a lot of these questions in these meetings on their behalf. Again because I’m very aware of the kinds of questions that they might have.

Kasey Husen — So I’ll be asking these questions. My goal is to put together, you know, a document of some sort, usually just one page, whatever we’re working on to really answer those questions that people outside of that room might have. Um and oftentimes it’s ah it’s a worthy exercise for that team – the executive team. You know, like you said you might have some in there who have very different opinions about something. And I feel like I’m oftentimes, you know, tearing off a stick of dynamite and throwing it in. Um, you know that’s kind of my job is to even sometimes take a side of something just to see what kind of reaction I get to know…

Rich Birch — Right.

Kasey Husen — …okay, we’re very committed to this, you know and not this.

Rich Birch — Right.

Kasey Husen — Or to at least drive more conversation in there so we leave that room with more clarity.

Rich Birch — Uh-huh.

Kasey Husen — Um, you know and and the thing is is the like the XP of Discipleship really in that room should desire a level of clarity also, but their primary role in there is not to figure out how to make the messaging clear for different audiences…

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Kasey Husen — …so that those people can take action. So um, again having your Comms Director in that meeting early on in the conversation really gives them a chance to organize that communication. And ah to advocate for a great transfer to others, so that it results in greater engagement. If you want to…

Rich Birch — Can you talk…

Kasey Husen — Yeah, go ahead.

Rich Birch — Oh sorry I was going to ask if you could talk through maybe an example maybe where there was a change in direction, or like something new was rolled out and, you know, take us inside that room. give me a sense of your role. You know to kind of talk that through a little bit.

Kasey Husen — Yeah, so, oftentimes ah you know I alluded to before that we can really be like the air traffic controllers. Um, and so again because the church just drifts into a place where we end up doing a lot of different things, or we’re excited about a lot of different things that once, you’re Comms Director, what I typically will provide in terms of value to this team, is that when we’re talking about a new initiative I can tell you what planes or messages are getting ready to take off.

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Kasey Husen — And I can tell you which ones are already in the air. And I can tell you which ones have landed, and even those that have crashed and burned…

Rich Birch — Oh gosh.

Kasey Husen — …if we just you know took took the whole illustration…

Rich Birch — Yes, run it right till the end. Love it.

Kasey Husen — …ah to the end. Yes, um, so so I am often you know having in those moments to say, okay, well we just rolled this out right now and we have people’s attention wrapped around this. Um, for instance, we’ve got a series coming up here pretty soon and I’m already sensing that there are quite a few people who have some different expectations and goals of our people, outcomes from this series week to week and then an overall one that will continue moving throughout the year. Um and especially if it impacts people’s finances. And you know I’m often the one who’s saying okay, let’s remember practically if we do this for seven weeks um, if we throw out that this is important each week, but then we’re also asking them to go sign up to do this over here…

Rich Birch — Right.

Kasey Husen — …you know, what are we going to be most disappointed with when it’s not done, when it’s not when people don’t engage with that. And and we can get into more of that as a practical you know how I ask questions with our our senior pastor specifically. Um, but I also do this in um, you know a little ah lesser pressure with like roadmapping a series. Um.

Rich Birch — Sure.

Kasey Husen — So I I get in on the front end of this with our senior pastor, or all our teaching pastors. Ahead of a series I’m sitting down and I’m saying, okay, you guys tell us what you’re thinking about doing for this duration. Um, and then I kind of say like what are the goals? What do we hope people will do um after this series? How will it change them? Then we go week by week…

Rich Birch — Right.

Kasey Husen — …and really talk through, Okay, what do we want them to know, feel, do (which came from Craig Groeschel), but just applying some of that even to our series…

Rich Birch — Right.

Kasey Husen — …um, road mapping so asking a lot of those questions is just another practical way that we do that.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. I love the the air traffic controller example I think is a very um is a very vivid example, and I think is very applicable for sure to this. I can see how that would be of huge value for sure. Can you talk a little bit more about… so one of the pressures I think so many of our churches face is there’s this it’s kind of like where you started. There’s this notion that, you know, somebody runs a department or they’re you know they’re involved in something and they’re like if I can just get somebody on the weekend to stand up and talk about this thing. Like if… And and they there’s I know they think all they need is that. But we know that that’s actually not going to guarantee that they’re going their thing could end up crashing and burning.

Kasey Husen — Right.

Rich Birch — Bring us all together. Why why do you just to kind of weekend stage promotions not the answer. How does that relate with the planes flying around? You know how has that actually benefited what you’ve done at Crossroads?

Kasey Husen — Yeah, so um, we have dozens of ministries in our church, and we also serve a preschool through 12th grade school that’s connected to us. So every day we’ve got planes or messages that are taking off, they’re in the sky, or they’re coming in for landing. So part of my job is to really protect the runway, and the skies from collisions or congestion. You know? So um, my executive team really empowers me in this role to really mine for clarity around the overarching winds of our church. And then to help remove barriers. For the most part they allow me to determine the best time for these planes to take off.

Kasey Husen — This took a while to get to this place. So I just want anyone to know who’s listening ah might sound like we got here overnight. We didn’t. It was it was a process. But one process I would give you just practically is we do a ministry planning cycle. And it really just gives us a proactive look at the schedule ahead. So our executive team will meet in the fall, we’ll really lay out the next year’s initiatives and the sermons series…

Rich Birch — Right.

Kasey Husen — …and then I’ll put that on a spreadsheet, a Google spreadsheet for everyone to see. But a next level thing is that I’ll also back in promotion. We know it’s going to take anywhere from four to six weeks talking about this thing…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Kasey Husen — …to get people to actually show up. So ah then I pass that off to the ministries and they’re really able to map out their 3 to 5 goals for the next six months and work ah with aligning with our overarching goals. So we then we built this culture where ministries understand that they can’t rely on the weekend stage to make their event successful. Um, because there’s limited space to promote things…

Rich Birch — Right.

Kasey Husen — …once we focus on all of those big rocks that we…

Rich Birch — Right.

Kasey Husen — …you know, tackled in the executive meeting and backed in that promotion. So ministries need to detail how they plan to do the work of engaging people around their event or initiative without the support of the weekend stage.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Kasey Husen — So if we’re able to emphasize their event at a time where it’s got a practical application from the message that week, or one of our strategic pushes, then that really is seen as a bonus to them. Again to go a long time to get here. And we could not have done that unless we we embrace this as a culture as an executive team. Because all of our executive leaders are really championing this within the ministries that they oversee.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. You know and continuing to move, I found in the past, moving departments to hey here’s a whole bunch of other ways that you can communicate what you you want to do, and and and don’t be and we can help you with that. We’ll we’ll help you figure through all the different tools that you could use, all the different approaches. And and frankly, a lot of it is like talking with your own people. Like it’s…

Kasey Husen — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …like it’s actually let’s actually you have a defined you know constituency; let’s get in front of them in the channels that make sense to get in front of them…

Kasey Husen — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …instead of just relying on being in front of everyone else.

Kasey Husen — And I find that that when they have that responsibility in order to put on this event, they actually start to ask questions like: is this really what our people need right now?

Rich Birch — Right.

Kasey Husen — And because they’re having to go to those people on their own and they’re not relying on a huge marketing arm of the church to do that for them. Sometimes these ideas get squashed on their own because they say well, yeah, actually we’re not sure…

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Kasey Husen — …you know, given all the work it’s going to take that we want to proceed forward with that.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Kasey Husen — We’re not going to get the outcome.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s that’s great. Um, so a little bit in a different direction around the same, you know, the same topic, a lot of what you do is lead up. A lot of what you do is lead and influence the you know your senior leader, but the you know other executives. Um when you think about that aspect of your role, do you have any advice? You know because I’m sure there’s communications people that are listening that are like oh my goodness, I would love to work there. It sounds like they actually appreciate the role of communications. And they’re they’re trying to think about man, how do I how do I influence the organization? Any advice for folks that would be listening in with that mindset?

Kasey Husen — Yeah, and like I said earlier it can really be um, it can kind of be an exhausting seat to sit in sometimes. Especially because um, I understand, you know, and it’s the same way here. Visionary leaders often they have more room for ambiguity than people sitting in this seat.

Rich Birch — That’s so true.

Kasey Husen — And so, you know, it’s a tension to manage. Eleven years in I would say we haven’t solved that problem. Um, it’s just again I go back to it’s been eleven years getting to know my senior pastor…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Kasey Husen — …and how he prefers to do things, and where we’re going. And often that’s led to me having conversations ah with him, you know, throughout the year. He’s in enneagram seven so he loves doing five exciting things at once. And he really believes that it will all work out. And but he would also tell you as a 7 he has to work really hard ah to fight off the tendency to avoid pain. So in situations where he wants to people to focus on five things, it’s kind of painful to have to tell a ministry we’re not going to do all of those things.

Rich Birch — Right.

Kasey Husen — And so I kind of lead up by asking questions like um, okay if we share these 5 things in the Sunday service, come Monday morning which of the 5 things will you be most eager to see results for?

Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.

Kasey Husen — And if you can’t answer that one, you know, usually there’s one that’s like I want to see people do this. Then that’s the most important thing. If you need more questions: which one of these will be the most painful for you if we don’t see engagement around it? Whatever the answer is to that, that’s the most important thing. And then I’m usually able to activate around building messaging for that or even fighting to push off other things to a time where the main thing isn’t going to suffer. But also just you know stepping into ah wanting to remove barriers. And when I notice we’re not on the same page about something, um, it’s important for us as Comm Directors even though in our fight for clarity um that we can often be coming in with feedback, we’re wanting to show honor to our senior leader. But also we’re representing about we’re representing what’s not clear about his vision or his communication and that can often feel like you’re calling his baby ugly.

Rich Birch — Sure.

Kasey Husen — So um, you know someone in this role I think really needs to earn that trust.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Kasey Husen — Um, and to to discern like is this a point where I need to have a conversation because my leader is at risk.

Rich Birch — Right.

Kasey Husen — And, you know, and and I would say if you know that then yeah, that’s a primary function of this role to step into those hard things for the purpose of keeping us on track toward the goal. But I would build that relationship and that trust and there might need to be some calibration throughout the year because it’s such a tension to manage just to continue reiterating: I am on your side, and I’m for you, and I’m in the support of whatever you feel like God is calling this church to do. And so although I’ll come in with some critical feedback here and there I have an opinion about how something might be done best um, you know at the end of the day it’s your call. But I feel like I wouldn’t be doing a service to you if I didn’t share, you know, what what might be a barrier to our success. So we’ve really worked that tension and we’ve established established a lot of trust over the years and I would say if there’s someone in this role, that’s something to focus on.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. I think that’s that’s such a lot of wisdom in that answer around, you know, the relationship side of it, and building trust, and there’s you know there’s wisdom there around, Okay, you know, not every hill is a hill we can die on and um, how do we find, you know…

Kasey Husen — Yeah. Yes, and I like to die on every hill, Rich. I really do.

Rich Birch — Love it. That’s this is been for good…

Kasey Husen — Eleven years in and I’m still pumped to die on all the hills…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Kasey Husen — …but I have to really really and make sure that I’m being wise about that.

Rich Birch — Love it. So good. As we come to close up today’s conversation, Kasey, anything else, you’d like to share? Anything else, you’d like to say to to help her guests as we close out today?

Kasey Husen — I would just say um, you know, in our pursuit of clarity and really hitting our overarching goals, helping our teams do that, there are some really awesome ways that we can pair um ministry opportunities with major initiatives or um, ah messages each week. And I’ll just give one example of that. You know for years we had teams coming to us saying, can you announce our ministry because we need more volunteers for this, you know? And just mentioning that was never really effective and it really just came across needy. Um, so now what we do is every year one of our pastors is preaching on gifts. Um, or they’re preaching on the importance of serving. And so we have now paired the pitch for people to get involved with ministry um, with that service every year, and it’s called Draft Day.

Kasey Husen — So all the ministries are out on the patio doing that. And we have seen the biggest results from pairing messages with opportunities in ministry because you’re getting multiple impressions and actually moving the hearts of people in multiple ways throughout the service to action, once again.

Kasey Husen — So um, there are some great ways, I’m happy if someone wanted to email me I could download them on a couple different ways we do some of the major things in churches…

Rich Birch — Love it.

Kasey Husen — …to get people engaged but um, but that’s one thing that I I hope people have have some energy to explore.

Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Well if people want to get in touch with you, or track with the church where do we want to send them online?

Kasey Husen — Yeah, you’re welcome to email me I’m Kasey, kasey@crossroadschurch.com and I’m also on Instagram – kaseyhusen.

Rich Birch — Love it. Thank you so much, Kasey. I really appreciate you being here today, cheering for you guys. Love what Crossroads is up to and I really appreciate your generosity and being here today. Thank you so much.

Kasey Husen — Thanks for having me, Rich.

Leading Through the Crisis Your Church is In (Or About to Be In) with Rusty George

Rich Birch — Thu, 13 Apr 2023 08:44:00 +0000

Thanks for tuning in for this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Rusty George this week, the lead pastor of Real Life Church in Southern California. In addition to being a pastor, Rusty is a speaker, teacher and author focused on making real-life simple.

As leaders, we all face difficult times and crises that challenge our faith and our ability to lead. Don’t miss this important conversation where Rusty shares his experiences and offers valuable lessons for how church leaders can prepare to deal with a crisis before it hits.

Crises will come. // The last few years have taught us that crises will come whether our church is ready for them or not. Particularly as a church grows, it will face more complex issues ranging from moral failures and suicide on your staff, to school shootings in the community, or even discord among team members. In addition your church may experience backlash from the larger community when crises hit. Admit that yes, you are broken and you don’t have it all together. Use the issues your staff is facing to reach out to people in the community experiencing the same hardships.
Care for your staff. // When crises hit, often the executive pastor is the first person who deals with the issue because he is trying to protect both the staff and the lead pastor. Remember that this work takes a toll on your staff and can lead to burnout. After dealing with the immediate needs, make sure to provide your staff with rest and the help they need.
Managing a crisis. // How do we manage a crisis when we’re in the middle of it? Think about the impact as a series of concentric circles. First evaluate who is the closest to the blast zone in this crisis. What do they need first and how can you help them? Then think about your staff and how to communicate what’s happening and how much to share. Next ask yourself what the church needs to know, and finally what the community needs to know. Lastly, circle back to the impact in your own life after dealing with the immediate crisis. Take time to process your grief and pursue healing with a therapist.
Plan ahead for crises. // Have the conversation with your elders and church leadership about what you’ll do in the face of crisis before it happens. Having a policy ahead of time prevents people from debating the consequences because everyone will know the plan to work through in that moment.
Balance grace and truth. // To deal with situations before they become crises, pastors need to create a culture of honesty where staff can come forward if they need help. Talk about your own therapy, sin issues, and problems. Practice what you preach when it comes to seeking help through counseling. But also be intentional about having hard conversations with your staff.
Look for red flags. // When it comes to protecting your staff against moral failure, there are safeguards you can put in place but ultimately people are going to make their own decisions. Look for red flags with your staff members – for example, do they have any friends on staff or within the church? Do they have any hobbies? If ministry is their only world they can get burned out quickly and make bad decisions.
Getting help with Rusty’s course. // In Rusty’s course, Leading Through Crisis, he takes an honest look at the crises Real Life Church faced, what they did right, what they did wrong, and what they would do differently if they had to do it again. A must-have for church leaders, the course walks leaders through crises such as dealing with issues on staff, moral failures, suicide, school shootings, grief in the community, handling the press, and more.

To get 50% off Rusty’s course, Leading Through Crisis, use the code unseminary during checkout through April 30, 2023. Learn more about Real Life Church at reallifechurch.org.

Thank You for Tuning In!

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: Chemistry Staffing

Download this two-in-one resource that walks you through the decision-making process.

Episode Transcript

Rich Birch — Well, hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Super excited for today’s interview. We have a repeat guest and friends, you know, we don’t do a lot of repeat guests here at unSeminary. But, uh, this guest is one of those people I said, listen, anytime you want to come on, you let me know cause I would love to have you on. So we’ve got Rusty George – he is the lead pastor of Real Life Church, multisite church in Southern California. He is a global speaker, a leader, and teacher focusing on making real life simple. He’s a author of, uh, several books, he has a weekly podcast called Leading Simple with Rusty George. So I knew he is, his sound would at least be great. I know that. And he’s just recently actually released a, an online course, which is a part of why I wanted to have him on to really wrestle this through. Uh, but Rusty, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.

Rusty George — Boy, it’s an honor to be back. Thank you so much. I’m a a big fan of the show and uh, it’s great to be on again.

Rich Birch — No, it’s so great to, to connect. Why don’t you fill out the picture there a little bit. What did I miss? What was, uh, you know what, yeah, what didn’t I talk about? How, fill out the picture a little bit.

Rusty George — Yeah. So I, I did not grow up in California. Everybody wants to know if that’s where I’m from, but I’m not. Uh, California was always a place you’d visit, not a place you’d live, from where I’ve come from.

Rich Birch — Sure.

Rusty George — Uh, so I’m from Kansas and grew up there and, uh, worked in Kentucky for a few years. That’s where a little bit of my accent comes from, as the people out here to like, to tell me. Moved out to California, took over a church, uh, that Kyle Idleman started, uh, and did just an incredible job, and felt like he did what he was called to do, and he left. I came out and it was almost three years old, meeting in a movie theater, and had great momentum already. And, uh, we were just, were able to, to have some really fun years of life in movie theaters, and then high schools, and building a building and moving in.

Rusty George — And I remember having a conversation with a guy who’s a, uh, seasoned veteran as a pastor, probably been leading for 40 years at the time. And I was all excited cuz we just moved in a new building. And so, you know, everything was up and to the right, and everybody was happy and…

Rich Birch — Sure.

Rusty George — Uh, it was great. And he looked at me and he said, man, you’re gonna see some things. And I said, what do you mean? He said, anytime you take a beachhead against the enemy, the enemy notices.

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Rusty George — And you, you just need to prepare yourself. You’re gonna see some things. And over the next 10 years we did. We just saw our share of, of wins, of highs, but also deep lows. And, uh, seminary did not prepare me for that.

Rich Birch — No, no.

Rusty George — That’s why I love your podcast. Um, but it, it left me, you know, kind of wrestling with, you know, my own calling. You know, you ask a lot of deep questions like, is this my fault? Um, you always second guess yourself – should I have done something differently? And you just learn a lot through that. So we had a, a lot of difficult times, a lot of great times too, but it’s been 20 years now at the church and, uh, we still believe our best days are ahead.

Rich Birch — I love it. I, I’d love to actually talk a little bit more about that and get, dig in a little bit, if that’s okay, around some of that, you know, that more negative stuff. I think this is one of those things we often, you know, we love to celebrate when things go well. We love to look at a, you know, a church like Real Life, which is, you know, has had huge impact, continues to have huge impact. Uh, but there’s the, you know, there’s the, you pull up the rock and look underneath and there’s like, Ooh, there’s some stuff under there that’s not so pretty. Fill out that picture a little bit. Talk us through those things.

Rusty George —Yeah. I remember in my early days of ministry, I love to quiz pastors about, hey, tell me how’d you grow? You know, h how’d you win? How’d you succeed? And we all look for those stories, right, cuz we think there’s some kind of silver bullet out there that’s gonna make everything great. But now that I’m older, I like to ask guys, tell me how you failed, uh, how I can learn from that. And so, I’m pretty open about sharing anything that we’ve done wrong, or we’ve experienced that was difficult.

Rusty George — Um, I, I think, you know, we had a variety of things happen. We had, uh, a couple of moral failures that happened on staff that had never happened up until that point. We prided ourself on this will never happen here. Uh, we’re such a spiritual group of people and, uh, you know, we love the Lord. But the reality is no matter how many, uh, things you put in the staff handbook, how many Billy Graham rules you have, it only works for people that really wanna stay faithful in their marriages. So people would put themselves in compromising positions and they’d make bad decisions. Uh, and unfortunately in a couple of those situations that ended in two separate suicides that we had to walk through as a church. And so, uh, that brought with it a lot of negative press about our church, and what’s really going on there. And I told you they weren’t really teaching the Bible. They’re not very spiritual. You know, so you have internal discord, you have, you have grief on staff, and then you have, uh, you know, these, this, uh, uh, the, the communities lashing out at you as to, I thought you guys had it all together.

Rusty George — And so it became a great opportunity for us to talk about, no, we do not have it all together.

Rich Birch — Right.

Rusty George — And we are broken people and we’re all trying to figure this out. And so let’s lean into the mental health side of things and see if we can help people who are struggling with suicide ideation. And, and we were able to do that. We’ve had, um, some staff drama of, uh, you know, a couple of staff members get arrested for various things.

Rich Birch — Oh my goodness.

Rusty George — Whether it’s, uh, you know, somebody, uh… and, and this is the thing about growing churches is when you go after reaching unchurched people and you start to reach them…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Rusty George — …then you want to hire them.

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Rusty George — And oftentimes they’re, they’re past, even though it’s forgiven by God, it’s not over with in, uh, you know, our day and age and it catches up to them. Uh, and that’s such a unique dynamic…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Rusty George — …when people from your church come on staff and, you know, you’ve seen this, and suddenly your, your, your boss is, or your pastor is now your boss.

Rich Birch — Right.

Rusty George — Suddenly your place of worship is your place of work, it just gets weird and whatever’s in you comes out of you, it kind of squeezes out. And and we just saw that, that some of that just happened. And we had to kind of pick up the pieces of that.

Rich Birch — Right.

Rusty George — Uh, we had rapid growth and thus, um, a a lot of, we had to hire a lot of new staff, and there became kind of this civil war on staff between the people that were there before the building and the people after the building.

Rich Birch — Right.

Rusty George — And how do you bridge that gap? And so those are just a few of the low lights…

Rich Birch — Amazing.

Rusty George — …so to speak, and, uh, you know, things we had to deal with.

Rich Birch — Well, it is interesting, you know, one of the in other contexts I’ve talked about a similar dynamic where as the church grows, at the senior level, it’s not like you deal with less people issues. It’s, you have just as many people issues. But, and, and like pastoral crisis kind of situations in people’s lives. But what ends up, at least my experience of it has been, as the church grows, you end up obviously building systems and have people that handle, you know, the normal stuff, that handle kind of normal crisis in people’s lives. But then the most complex stuff still continues to bubble up to, you know, the senior leaders in, in the church. And you don’t ever get away, at least my experience is you just never get away from that. That is, that’s a normal piece of the puzzle.

Rusty George — That you’re exactly right. I remember hearing from a seasoned pastor, a guy by the name of Bob Russell tell me, hey, everything at our church was amazing. And I would say, I think he said, 80% of everything at Southeast was incredible. And 15% was bad, and 5% was awful. And he said…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Rusty George — What do you think I spent most of my time thinking about?

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Rusty George — And I said…

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Rusty George — The 5%. It’s kind of like, uh, I think it was President Obama said, when stuff lands on your desk, you realize nobody else could handle it.

Rich Birch — Right, Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.

Rusty George — So…

Rich Birch — It’s true.

Rusty George — …when it gets to the senior pastor’s desk, you’re like, oh my goodness. And, and really it’s the executive pastor that gets it first. And, you know, we had a great XP through all of that, that, that shouldered a lot of that. Um, and then, you know, he would call me in when, when only I needed to deal with it or needed to know. But what I failed to recognize was even though I was dealing with my own kind of internal pain and crisis and all that, he was dealing with even more. Because he was carrying weight of protecting me, but also protecting the staff. And that eventually led the burnout for him. And we got him help, and he’s fine now. But you have to remember that, that your staff takes, uh, it takes a toll on them as well.

Rich Birch — Yeah. I love, um, one of the things you say in your, in your online course, I probably don’t love this, that’s the wrong way to say it, but I, it resonates to be true in my life. You’re either, uh, in a crisis or heading towards one. And, and I think post-pandemic, this has become true for all of us. Like we, we can see this, right? Like we were, it was not that long ago, uh, that, you know, we had the Silicon Valley Bank, you know, you know, failure. And it was fascinating. That was an interesting little crisis that was an external, not a little crisis, a crisis that was external. Uh, I remember reading about this thinking, oh, that’s kind of interesting. And then literally within about 48 hours, I heard of multiple people who are pretty close to me, who that was having an impact on them.

Rich Birch — It wasn’t like, it wasn’t just like this, like theoretical something you read in the paper. It’s like, that thing rippled out. And it was like, well, uh, all of our, you know, you know, I knew this one church where their, like, their payroll company had their money in SVP was, and so they were using them as the clearing. And like, you know, it’s, it’s interesting how these crisis, they come, you know, to us. And we’ve all seen this for sure, you know, post pandemic.

Rich Birch — But let’s talk about that around how do, how do we manage it as, you know, as ourselves? What would be some of the, how, how do we as the leader in the midst of all this… um, you know, it’s kind of like doing your kids’ diapers. I remember people would say like, oh, it’s different when it’s your kids. And I was like, no, it’s not any different. They’re just, no one else is going to do it. Like no one, no one else is gonna change their diapers, so you have to change them. The same is, there’s some similar dynamics with crisis. Like, it’s not that it’s… you’re the person that happens to be the executive pastor, the lead pastor, and so it’s your job. How do I manage the crisis uh, if I’m in the middle of it, how do I manage the impact on myself?

Rusty George — Yeah. And this is one of the things we cover in the course is you have to think about it from a variety of concentric circles. The first one is, who’s the closest to the blast zone? Like in the case of, of, of a suicide, it was a family involved in that. Uh, this one individual had taken his life and now, you know, his wife had found him. His kids are coming home from school in a few hours.

Rich Birch — Oh my goodness.

Rusty George — We’re over there on site trying to help out, okay, what does this family need first? Okay. So that’s the, that’s the biggest thing. How can we help them? But then there’s a second tier of, okay, what about our staff? Because they’re gonna need to know about this. And so how do we assemble, uh, the staff together, uh, without just, you know, sending out a text to everybody…

Rich Birch — Right.

Rusty George — …but get ’em in a room and how do we, you know, and, and then there’s that delicate balance of what’s our story to tell? What do we tell, what do we not tell? Because the wife has what’s, you know, what she needs to say. And, and all of that. Everything in me wanted to, to deal with the neighbors who were calling and the people that were coming outta their houses. And, you know, but they, they weren’t on my radar just yet. So then it goes from staff into the church. What does the church need to know? And then from the church out to the community, what does the community need to know? And there’s different checkpoints along the way.

Rusty George — And I, I think, uh, you know, for myself and for our executive pastor, we just decided, okay, we are locked in on these concentric circles. And we’ll just put kind of a date on the calendar about three weeks out when we’ll get back to our grief. I’ll, I’ll, I’ll give you an example. We had another crisis we went through, we had a school shooting in our community, which, uh, took the life of one of the kids from our church, um, and, and injured another. And so it, it was a huge issue, obviously, in our community, but it really devastated our church. And, and truthfully for me, I happened to be in the hospital room when they broke the news to the mom that her daughter had died. And I, I, I will never forget that sound. And, but I had to put a pin in it. I had to kind of put it aside and say, I’ll deal with this in about three weeks.

Rusty George — And this is something we talk about in the video as well, and I got this from some other high level leader. He said, the, the life cycle of a crisis in a church for people of the church or the community is only two weeks. Because they’re so selfish, they gotta get back to their own crisis.

Rich Birch — Okay. Okay.

Rusty George — Which…

Rich Birch — There’s probably some truth to that.

Rusty George — …there’s a lot of truth to that. And we would often…

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Rusty George — …joke about long before these horrible crises that put, you know, put a, a mark on the calendar, two weeks from now, this will no longer be that big of an issue, because there’s other stuff that comes up. And to be able to say, I’m in full crisis management mode now, but in two weeks I gotta deal with this myself. Which I went to grief counseling over it, went to, you know, know kind of the PTSD stuff. What did that do to me and my psyche? And how do I heal up from this? Taking some time off for some of your senior staff leaders that were kind of in on this, that helped us kind of process, all right, where’s our energy gonna go? Because you only get so much, you only get so many hours of the day. How are we gonna work these concentric circles to benefit as many people as possible?

Rich Birch — Okay. I, yeah, I love that. Uh, I think that’s really good. You know, even as we’re thinking about our people, like, hey, we, let’s put a pin in it and then let’s loop back on this two, three weeks from now. We need to deal with this situation, what’s immediately here, and then let’s come back to it.

Rich Birch — Can we talk about moral failures? You mentioned this…

Rusty George — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …and, you know, you had this un unfortunately, this is one of those things that has gone through so many of our churches, and we’ve, you know, we’ve, we’ve dealt with this in so many ways. One of the, one of my concerns, I would say, uh, having watched this in, even some of the churches I’ve worked with, it’s, you know, it has racked the, the church is, you know, there’s this spectrum here where leaders make, um, you know, you start with like, maybe silly decisions, and then it’s like unwise, and then foolish. And then eventually you trip over the line of sin. Like, it goes from being like, okay, these were, this was a stupid idea. Like, I shouldn’t have, I shouldn’t have texted her that extra time, or I shouldn’t have, you know, I said, I was like a weird joke. And then eventually you step over the line to sin, and then on the other end of the spectrum, it’s like evil. Like you do terrible, terrible things, you know, to you now avoid, you know, you’re layering sin upon sin to try to avoid detection and all that.

Rich Birch — One of the things that I’ve found interesting is as moral failure comes out—and there is a question here, it’s not me just making statements—as moral failure comes out, there’s so much cancel culture that goes on now. Right? There’s so much like, we’re gonna flush these people out. And I, I think responsibility is important. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t, people shouldn’t take responsibility. I have a high value on that as a person that’s in the church. But my, I think what happens every time that happens when we, we kind of, these people get flushed away is people who have made silly, unwise, foolish decisions, it gets stuffed down deep. They’re like, I’m not talking to anybody about this. I’m not, I am not. And, and then ironically, it actually, I think can propagate even more.

Rich Birch — So, talk me through moral failure. What should we be thinking about as maybe something’s on our doorstep? There is actually, you know, a a a leader’s come to you and said, I listen, I stepped on somewhere I shouldn’t have. Um, or it’s maybe even, you know, you just sense like there’s something awry with a team member, that kind of thing. Uh, talk us through some of your experience on that front.

Rusty George — Yeah, that’s a, that’s a great question. And you know, as one of my counselors told me after our, our second suicide from an individual—it was one of our campus pastors—we, we uncovered, uh, a bunch of stuff that we did not know about. Anyway, my counselor says to me, you can influence the heart of man, but you cannot control it. At some point, they’re gonna do what they wanna do. And I remember in a couple, couple of these instances that we began to notice some strange kind of interaction between two people on staff. We immediately removed them from working with each other. Um, we, we, uh, we sat down with one individual and it was a bit of an intervention. He asked us for help. We granted help, we provided counseling. We separated that job out. Nothing had had come up that was fireable yet.

Rusty George — So you don’t wanna just start, you know, uh, firing at everybody, because sometimes they’re, they didn’t even know that they were being, you know, groomed or whatever. So you begin to, to try to, to mitigate that a little bit. Anyway, but at the end of the day, they, they make the decisions they make. And so I think the next question becomes then how much do you share? Because everybody in your church wants to know every bit of the details, because we do live in a culture where it’s, it’s all accessible. Right? And so I, I think in the situation of, of one of those suicides, what we unearthed later, I did not know ahead of time. And I became accused of you’re hiding stuff. I didn’t hide anything. I didn’t know anything.

Rich Birch — Mm-hmm.

Rusty George — And so, but it, you know, I think from stage, instead of coming out and airing all the dirty laundry, because there’s families involved, there’s kids involved. There’s, you know, uh, people watching from their hometown, you know, during this time. You have to kind of say, listen, we don’t know all the facts. We’re learning as we go.

Rich Birch — Right.

Rusty George — But here’s what we do know. And you just need to know I’m not gonna tell you everything, but I’m gonna tell you what you need to know. And you need to know that we’re gonna do this with integrity, and we’re gonna find out what we need to find out, and we’re gonna help the people involved. Larry Osborne gave me some great advice many years ago. He said, have the conversation now with your eldership. What are we gonna do in the moment of a moral failure? Because it’s gonna happen.

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.

Rusty George — And if you have the conversation before it happens, then you don’t have people picking sides. Cuz what will happen is…

Rich Birch — Right.

Rusty George — …half of your people want grace. The other half want justice. So go ahead and come up with a plan: this is what we’re gonna do. Another thing we offer on the course, so you can look through, all right, in this moment, this person gets counseling, this person gets to stay, this person loses their job. Uh, all those kind of things. But at the end of the day, you can only do as much as you can do because they make their own decisions.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Talk us through that a little bit. Cuz I do feel like that to me is like at the nub of the issue, which is like how… I, I guess I assumed when I started in ministry, I, early on, I, I was coached by some great leaders who said, listen, once you decide to be in ministry, your private life is a public consequence that, you know, you, you pick to do this. And so if, uh, you know, what you do with your private time is actually, uh, is relevant to your ministry. And so how do we, and I get that, that’s like…

Rusty George — Sure.

Rich Birch — …I think an interesting principle for me to live by, but I also understand on the other side, we want to guard people. And we want to provide a certain amount, and we’re trying to balance off that grace and truth. Uh, help me kind of divide out the lines there for me a little bit. Help me understand that.

Rusty George — Well, if I had a good answer for that, I’d market that. I, I , I think that it’s different for everybody. It’s a bell shaped curve. You have people on each end…

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Rusty George — …that want to know nothing. And those that want to know everything and somewhere in the middle is a, a healthy balance.

Rich Birch — Right.

Rusty George — You know, I think I, I would start with your, you know, telling your staff, let’s, let’s watch what we post on social media.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Rusty George — I’m glad that you’re out with your friends and having a good time, but it may not need to be a picture of all of you holding beer bottles, just because we have so many people recovering in our church.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Rusty George — I don’t care if you drink. That that’s, you know, that’s every church makes their own decision on that. But let’s, let’s keep in mind what the, uh, the larger scope actually sees. And let’s just, let’s just have a, a core value of we’re going to be honest about things. And this is so much better now than it was 30 years ago.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Rich Birch — Because pastors are so more likely to talk about their own therapy, their own sin issues, their own problems. And so now it becomes a, I think I can lean in, I think I can trust, um, I, I think in these situations, uh, people, they don’t need to know you’re perfect. They, they like to know you’re real. They just know that they, they wanna know that you’re acknowledging your stuff and moving ahead. So I think in these situations, you know, with your staff and, and with your church, you’re constantly educating them that, no, we’re not perfect. We don’t have it all together. Um, we’re learning as we go. Uh, little things like I always tell, you know, lead pastors: don’t tell people to be in a small group if you’re not in one. And don’t lead it…

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Rusty George — …you know, be in one; be subject to one.

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Rusty George — Uh, don’t tell people to go to counseling if you don’t go…

Rich Birch — Right.

Rusty George — …because you need someone to talk to and, you know, and, and talk about that from time to time. So it’s just modeling it, I think goes a long ways. And that prepares you for when there might be a problem to say, uh, yeah, we had a, we had an incident, and this is what we’re doing. Now, granted, there are gonna be people that say, I can’t believe you fired him for that offense.

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Rusty George — But…

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Rusty George — …that’s church policy. That’s just what we do.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Rusty George — Uh, in that particular case, now you need to know we’re taking care of them and we’re, we’re helping the family along the way. Uh, and I’ll, I’ll be with them through that process. But that’s like the complicated thing of being a pastor. You wear so many hats.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Rusty George — Sometimes you’re CEO, sometimes your pastor, sometimes your therapist.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Rusty George —Uh, but it just, it’s different every time.

Rich Birch — Yeah. And I, I love that advice. I think that’s so, so smart around like, hey, we need to have, it’s like we have the co have to con we have to have the conversation before we have to have the conversation. Like, let’s define a bit of what the boundaries are here. Let’s talk that through and agree on that before we get to the point where, like, where is that crisis manual again? Can I pull that off the shelf? Like, now is the time to talk about that. I think that’s so good. I remember years ago there was a, there was a, um, two people on our staff who, um, you know, we were way at this retreat and it was like, um, I just was like, okay, they’re, you’re a little too cozy.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Rusty George — You’re just a little too cozy. And so these were both people that I deeply respected, people that worked for me.

Rich Birch — And, um, you know, on Monday I pulled him into my office and I said, hey guys, like I, I, I’m not accusing you of anything, but I just want to tell you the things I saw. And here are the three or four different things that I saw that were, that, that just rang bells inside of me. Like I, I don’t know that you are being, the language I use was, I don’t know that you are sending the message necessarily that, that you want to send. Um, and again, I’m not accusing you of anything, but this is where that’s at. That took, man, I was like, and I was deep into my career when I did that. This was not like first five years thing. It was years in. It was a, that was a hard conversation. But, you know, it was interesting. Like, I, um, the one person was super pissed, like, I can’t believe, like you’re, you know, you’re accusing me of everything.

Rusty George — Yeah.

Rich Birch — And I’m like, no, I’m not, I’m not accusing you of anything. This is, I’m telling you what I saw. And the other person was really quiet and then looped back around a couple days later and said, you know, Rich, I really appreciate you flagging that. I said, you know, you read it exactly right. I, you know, things were, not, nothing has happened, but like I, this was a sobering moment for me. And I appreciated that.

Rusty George — Right.

Rich Birch — I was like, oh, good. Like that’s, you know, hey, you know, that’s heading in the right direction. Um, but having those hard conversations are really, really tough. I think the moral issue thing is so hard.

Rusty George — What a valuable thing for them to be able to do that. Because first of all, you’re safeguarding the church. We have to always think about that.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Rusty George — But, but you’re also maybe preventing them from going down a road that they think, oh, I’ve gone down too far now and now I’m stuck. A couple of indicators I look for in people now.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Rusty George — I mean, obviously those situations are red flags, but there’s a couple of others that I’ve just noticed. One is, does, do they have any other friends? Um, you know, I I, I often think about the people we let go on staff are often the people that didn’t fit, and they don’t have any other friends on staff, or maybe they don’t even have any other friends in the church of the same sex – that they’re, you know, they, they just have a, a buddy relationship with somebody in their life that can call ’em on something.

Rusty George — And the second one is, do they have any hobbies? I know that sounds like an outlier, but you know, if ministries are only a world, they’re gonna get burned out really quick. And then they start making stupid decisions. And, uh, we, we all know from the host of podcasts that are out there chronicling the failures of people in ministry that, um, you know, it often is a result of a lack of friendship and a lack of hobbies. There’s no…

Rich Birch — Right.

Rusty George — …there’s no value to life other than their work. And then they end up resenting their work along the way.

Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s so good. I remember years ago, similarly another kind of flag that I’ve, that has stuck with me. I was talking with, uh, an individual who coaches a lot of people or councils, really a lot of people who have been through this kind of, um, you know, this kind of experience, a moral fail failure. And I said, well, what, what are your things that, you know, what’s your coaching to us as leaders? What’s the kind of thing we should be looking for without, you know, looking for evil around every corner? Like, let’s not get paranoid about it. And they said, you know, it’s interesting if you just listen to enough stories, you hear a lot of these relationships, if they go sideways with some sort of moral failure, it happens at conferences, away at a camp, away at like, there’s some sort of, like, we’re, and so they were like, listen, just be aware on those kinds of things. Just be, which is interesting cuz that aligned with my other, that my other kind of own personal experience where I was like, okay, that is interesting. Right? And they’re like, it’s just, that’s just how life works. I thought that’s kind of interesting.

Rusty George — It’s true.

Rich Birch — Well this is just one of the kinds of, uh, you know, potential crisis fun thing that churches get to, you know, to deal with. There’s a a lot in this course that I, I really do think… I listen friends, I think this is one of those courses that you should be taking. Um, it should be the kind of thing that you are, you know, you’re, at least from my perspective, you shouldn’t wait till you’re in a crisis to go through this kind of thing. This is kind of good, you know, let’s get ahead with our senior leaders. There’s lots of stuff listed in here. So you talk about dealing with suicide, you talked about moral failure. Um, you talked about, um, you know, this, the tragedy of dealing with the school shooting, which unfortunately, like, it’s just sad that that has to be in a course, like, but it’s it’s unfortunately way too common as you know, it should be. There’s this whole I issue of what do we deal with, you know, the press in these scenarios. Man, there’s a lot in this course. Talk to me a little bit about why you put this course together.

Rusty George — Well, I just saw that, man, we had lived through so much, and a lot of people were asking us about it. I had people will call up and say, hey, what, we’ve got this suicide. What, what do we do with? Or we’ve got, uh, a school shooting, or… I remember after our school shooting, uh, one of the ministers from Sandy Hook called me and said, how you doing? And man, that meant so much to me. Because he’d been through it. Um, and, you know, we were able to reach out to Nashville just, uh, uh, not long ago after their school shooting and, and provide some assistance. So just, I, I think it, it provides some, some healing when you get to share your pain. So we deal with that. Uh, we deal with what do you do when people are leaving your church and it just wrecks your, your soul, which we’ve all been through that. Uh being out here in California, you know, with the death of Kobe Bryant, even though he did not attend our church, uh, the loss of Kobe in the LA area was a huge thing. And he’s, you know, what do you do when somebody dies that’s not always that honorable, but yet your people want you to honor them. Uh you know, how, how do you walk through that? Um, and just staff stuff. I mean, everybody deals with just crazy staff stuff. If you’ve got a staff of two or 200…

Rich Birch — Right.

Rusty George — …uh, people, people bring themselves to the workplace. So how do you manage that? And we deal a lot with internal stuff too, in the counseling that we dealt with.

Rich Birch — Hmm. Yeah. It’s fascinating. Well, if people want to get this course, where do we want to send them online uh, you know, to pick this up?

Rusty George — Yeah. They can just go to my website, pastorrustygeorge.com and for your listeners, Rich…

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Rusty George — …if they use the code word unseminary…

Rich Birch — Love it!

Rusty George — …they get 50% off. So…

Rich Birch — What!? That’s amazing!

Rusty George — 50%, baby. That’s right. So, uh…

Rich Birch — That’s incredible.

Rusty George — …just for you.

Rich Birch — That’s amazing. Thank you so much for that. What a gift.

Rusty George — Absolutely. Yeah. And we’re having people buy it not just for themselves, but they watch it with, with their teams or, they’ll gift it to another pastor, which you can do that as well and say, hey, I, I just wanna make sure that you’re taken care of should you go through something like this. Or maybe they are going through something like this.

Rich Birch — Well it’s interesting you say that, cuz actually, as we were talking about this, I was like, man, if I was in a denomination, if I was a part of a network, if I was, uh, you know, if I was in, if I had some leadership responsibility over a number of churches, I would gift this to all those people. I’d use that code and gift it to all of those people and say, hey, here is a great training resource that you can use. Um, you know, it is, uh, it’s super helpful; I’ve had a chance to look through it – it’s super helpful. Um, and, and, you know, put together in a winsome manner that’s not all like paranoid, paranoid, paranoid. It’s like actually helpful. It’s not, it’s, this isn’t hype; it’s help. Um, it’s not fear driven, it’s faith driven. You know, it’s, it’s, uh, but full of lots of helpful resources. So I would highly recommend that people do that. Drop by pastorrustygeorge.com, use that code, which is super gracious of you to, you know, to pick that up. Have you heard any, you know, kind of response back from church leaders as they’ve started using it? Anything that’s kind of stuck, stuck out to them or anything that, you know, has kind of, has kind of resonated as they’ve, as they’ve been going through it?

Rusty George — Yeah, I mean, obviously you hear from some people that say, oh yeah, that’s great. I’ll keep that as a bookmark for when I go through crisis. Uh, but then the people that watch it say, oh, I’m so glad I saw that because now I see a few things that are coming, uh, that I can hopefully prevent or avoid. And, and we deal with the things that we did right. And the things we wish we would’ve done differently, uh, to be able to, to help some people, uh, navigate some of those pitfalls that we didn’t see coming.

Rich Birch — Yeah. I love it. And, you know, and there are in exa these kinds of situations, when they come up with our church, they demand a ton of us. Uh, so taking time now ahead of time to actually dig into them and think about them, man, it’s, that’s the way you want to do that. Even just that one little bit. The one piece around moral failure, Hey, let’s talk about this with our team before we get there. All of these things and a similar kind of category. I was in, uh, an organization where it wasn’t a church, but where we ran into a crisis situation where we literally had to get the crisis manual down off the shelf and look at it and go check by check, okay, when do we call the cops? When do, you know, all of that kind of stuff. And man, if I hadn’t looked at that stuff ahead of time, if I hadn’t thought about that ahead of time, um, that would’ve been a terrifying moment.

Rusty George — Right.

Rich Birch — So this is a perfect course for that kind of thing to, because you might not have, we, you know, I just blew past that. You might not have a, a crisis response, you know, kind of thought about as a church, and this could help you think through this ahead of time. So I would strongly encourage people to drop by, uh, pastorrustygeorge.com, pick up this, uh, today. Anything else you wanna say just as we wrap up today’s episode?

Rusty George — Uh, just that I would, uh, love to help out as many people as possible, not make the mistakes that I made, not deal with the grief that I dealt with, so that we can hopefully, uh, keep some guys in the game a lot longer. Uh, because our, our world is in need of so many more churches, and not just churches that keep the doors open, but healthy, uh, thriving churches, which is why I’m such a fan of unSeminary. So thanks for what you do, Rich.

Rich Birch — Thanks Rusty, appreciate what you do, and thanks for being on the show today.

Rusty George — Thank you.

Leveraging Data to Drive Ministry Outcomes at Your Church with Erik Henry

Rich Birch — Thu, 23 Mar 2023 08:44:00 +0000

Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking today with Erik Henry, the Executive Pastor of Central Christian Church in Wisconsin.

Data is critical to accurately understand what’s happening at your church and what’s changing over time. Listen in as Erik discusses the importance of using data to make informed decisions at your church as well as best practices for creating a survey that collects the needed information.

Data allows you to make decisions. // As church leaders, we can rely on our gut feelings when making decisions. But what if we could use data to make more informed decisions? Data allows you to make decisions based on what is really happening, but it’s only as good as the question it answers or the decision it helps you make.
Behavior and self-reported spiritual maturity. // It’s difficult to measure spiritual maturity because it’s so complex, individualized, and often cyclical. However we can measure behaviors and self-reported feelings about spiritual maturity. While this data isn’t useful on its own, tracking the changes to these measurements over time can help you determine what’s working and what needs improvement.
Create surveys. // Surveys are a useful tool for gathering data and tracking changes over time. However there are also limitations of survey data and we need to interpret it carefully. For example, when measuring the self-reported feelings about spiritual maturity of church members, it is important to consider the sample of the church that is willing to take the survey. Erik warns against overstepping the difference between causation and correlation, as pastors may push certain behaviors as the mark of spiritual maturity, leading to a new kind of legalism.
Focused and brief. // Erik emphasizes the importance of keeping surveys simple, clear, specific, and brief, with no more than 10 short questions. Each question needs to be directly aimed at something you want an answer to. The surveys at Central Christian Church are sent out via email and use Google Forms which most people are familiar with.
Determine what to ask. // What are the key performance indicators for your church as a whole? Focus your questions on measuring your KPIs to get the most useful data from your surveys.
Survey Fatigue. // Incorporating surveys into your communication strategy is a helpful assistant in the decision-making process, but be cautious about overusing it. Central Christian limits churchwide surveys to twice a year. After surveying your people, consider distributing the results and connecting it to your decision-making.

You can learn more about Central Christian Church at www.centralwired.com. Plus check out examples of their surveys below:

Central Check-in // A churchwide survey that assesses Central Christian’s people and finds patterns that may help the staff to help the congregation grow in their faith throughout the coming year.
Central Check-in Results // Charts of the 305 responses to the Central Check-in survey.
Example Staff Satisfaction Survey // Used to build healthy staff culture at Central Christian
Example Volunteer Satisfaction Survey // Used to assess the volunteering experience at Central Christian.

Thank You for Tuning In!

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: Chemistry Staffing

Download this two-in-one resource that walks you through the decision-making process.

Episode Transcript

Rich Birch — Hey, everybody, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you’ve decided to tune in today. You know every week we try to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you. Today is definitely going to deliver that for you. We’ve got Erik Henry with us. He’s the executive pastor at a church that you should be tracking along with, Central Christian Church. Now there’s only one of them in the country;I know this is one of those names of churches – there’s a lot of them out there so which one are we talking about? We’re talking about the one that’s kind of in the middle between Chicago, Madison, and Milwaukee. This is a fantastic church or a multi-site church with both English and speaking congregation. Ah, one of the fastest growing churches in the country. Erik, so glad you’re here. Welcome to the show.

Erik Henry — Thanks for having me, man. I really appreciate that.

Rich Birch — Yeah I’m honored that you’re here. I’d love to love your church. Love what God’s doing there. Can we start with kind of tell us about, for folks that don’t know, fill out the picture tell us about Central and then tell us about your role. What is what do you do as an executive pastor at your church?

Erik Henry — Sure. Yeah, Central is a it’s kind of a… yeah I talk to executive pastors all the time and all of us say that our churches are weird. Um, every…

Rich Birch — Mm, so true. Yes, very true.

Erik Henry — Every church is not like any other church and so ah, but…

Rich Birch — But yours really is. Yours really is.

Erik Henry — Ours really is.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Erik Henry — But you know we we live we’re a large church in a small community. You know 35,000 people in our community and um, it’s not in a big city. It’s not in the suburbs. It’s not in in a growing area. It’s actually in a semi-depressed area, and so you know a lot of it’s very blue collar. It’s not white collar. You know people working in um, in executive roles. It’s it’s very blue collar community and it’s it’s just a different place. And so um I love it. I’ve been at Central for 23 years. I was actually teaching math, high school math…

Rich Birch — Oh wow.

Erik Henry — …and I I was on just coming to church here. They asked me to come on staff and start ah, young, ah like a Gen X Ministry, back when that was a kind of the thing.

Rich Birch — Oh yeah, Gen X. Gen X, remember that? That was like all the cool and hip.

Erik Henry — Yeah, oh yeah, yeah. That’s when we were young.

Rich Birch — It’s going to happen to you, Gen Z friends. It’s going to happen to you someday.

Erik Henry — True story.

Rich Birch — But you’re going to look back and laugh and say, remember when they used to pay attention to us? Well they never paid attention to Gen X. I’m Gen X as well. So.

Erik Henry — Yeah.

Rich Birch — But yeah, that’s great. Love it. So you started there and then kind of works your way up.

Erik Henry — So anyway so I started there. I’ve been here 23 years…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Erik Henry — …and I just kind of I can’t decide whether I kept getting promotions, or I just couldn’t keep a job.

Rich Birch — I love it.

Erik Henry — But I went from um I went from Young Adults to ah Worship Pastor to Creative Arts Director to Discipleship Pastor to a Campus Pastor.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Erik Henry — And then now I’m the Executive Pastor. I and I got into this role in February or a January of 2020. so I thought I was hopping right in at the perfect time…

Rich Birch — Perfect.

Erik Henry — …and then a month later you know what.

Rich Birch — A vision for a new decade. You know, got 2020 vision we know exactly… all those churches that had clear vision for 2020, we know exactly where God’s going to lead us that year. No, not true.

Erik Henry — Bingo.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool.

Erik Henry — So um so yeah anyway so it’s it’s been a blast. I’ve so I’ve got 3 years under my belt as Executive Pastor.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Erik Henry — Um I you know we we had wanted this to be sort of ah a more of a ministry use ah, focused Executive Pastor role. We were going to hire on an Operations focused Executive Pastor, but you know with everything that happened um that I’m filling both of those roles right now.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Erik Henry — And so um, but truthfully I love it. I enjoy it. I but I am doing a job that I was never trained for, especially on the operation side. And so I’m I’m going back to school.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Erik Henry — I’m getting my MBA right now…

Rich Birch — Oh very cool.

Erik Henry — …in data analytics.

Rich Birch — Data. That’s cool.

Erik Henry — And so so it’s something something that I really enjoy. You know I’m a math guy; I’m a geek and so um, so the the data thing is exciting to me. I’ve been really enjoying. I’ll graduate with my MBA in December.

Rich Birch — Right. Congratulations, congratulations on that. That’s so good.

Erik Henry — Yeah, thanks.

Rich Birch — Well you know data is interesting. I know a lot of we have a lot of executive pastors or executive pastor wannabees that are listening in ah and when you said data I know that people perked their ears up and said, ooh this one’s going to be a good episode. I’m excited about that. Because we do we think about… a lot of executive pastors see the world through spreadsheets; we that you know the world is just a series of spreadsheets, different tabs. Um, but you know talk to us about data. Why why is data important for us as church leaders to be thinking about?

Erik Henry — Yeah, great. You know I love this stuff. Data for me, and I think it should be for everybody, data is all about making good decisions. Um, data is only as good as the question it answers or the decision it helps you make. Um and so ah, part of the problem that I see in church a lot is that churches and leaders in churches usually make decisions from their gut. You know? The the sense.

Rich Birch — It’s so true.

Erik Henry — So and and I’m not I’m I’m not denigrating that. There’s there’s a place for that. And and not just your gut but also your spirit. You know there’s a there’s a place when you are um, following and and listening to the Holy Spirit. There’s a place for listening and and ignoring data. But I think I think we do that a little too much.

Rich Birch — Are okay.

Erik Henry — And I think, you know, part of what I think is important about data is it allows us to make decisions based on what’s really happening not based on a gut feeling. Um and the reality you know as well as I do ah a lead pastor is going to hear what the people want him to hear. They’re gonna he’s gonna…

Rich Birch — Sure.

Erik Henry — …he’s going to hear what ah because people love him.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Erik Henry — People want to love him.

Rich Birch — Right.

Erik Henry — People want him to think that they’re really on his side. And so sometimes even though a lead pastor can feel like they’re in the know and they get their people. Um it is not exactly that clear because they have a skewed understanding because people show them what they want him to see.

Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. You know I’ve said for years, there’s there’s no bad information. There’s just information we don’t like. We want data. We have to get, ah you know, the the real information on the ground. But let me play the the you know the negative voice. Ah you know, listen come on, Erik, we’re in a spiritual game here. We’re we’re trying to help people grow spiritually. You can’t get that onto a spreadsheet so don’t even bother. Why would we do it at any level? Isn’t it just all about like you say you know how you know how the Spirit leads, but you know at its core, you know, we can’t; we can’t. The core thing that we hopefully do in our churches, see people take steps towards Jesus, you can’t get that onto a ah spreadsheet, can you?

Erik Henry — And I agree with that, to a point.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Erik Henry — I do because there are things that we can measure and there are things that we can’t. Um and and so I’d like to, you know, first off the bat the first thing that I know that every pastor would love to be able to do is measure spiritual maturity. I can measure if you are where you are when you come here. and then I can measure how spiritually mature you are as you ah go through all of the programs or whatever of our church. My opinion, and this is just my opinion, you cannot measure spiritual maturity.

Rich Birch — Right, right, right.

Erik Henry — It is way too complex. It is it is so clearly ah, an individualized um thing. It’s also it’s it’s circular. It’s cyclical, and it is not an up and to the right trajectory. Rarely is it that.

Rich Birch — Right. That’s a good insight.

Erik Henry — Also it has so so often it has so little to do with our church. The way that people grow we think it’s going to be our church that grows them. But the reality is the way that people grow is when they lose a loved one and they walk through that, and it’s painful, and in the end they see that they have gotten closer to Jesus as a result.

Erik Henry — Now I’m not I’m not saying that there are no, there is no role for the church. Of course, there’s a huge role for the church at this. But to say that we can measure spiritual maturity. Um I think is a little ah overstating.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Erik Henry — But there are things that we can measure.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Erik Henry — We can’t measure maturity, but we can measure behaviors, and we can measure self-reported feelings about spiritual maturity.

Rich Birch — Interesting. Okay.

Erik Henry — Now I want to I want to suggest that those are two different things. Spiritual maturity is different, actual spiritual maturity, is different than self-reported feelings about spiritual maturity.

Erik Henry — Because we’re not always um as self-aware as we want to be, as we wish we were.

Rich Birch — Right. It’s so true.

Erik Henry — And so um and so as we measure these things, it’s just really important that we are are clear and careful about describing exactly what we’re measuring. Um and mathematicians and statisticians, that’s what you’re about. We don’t want to overstate.

Rich Birch — Yes, right.

Erik Henry — We want to be very careful everything that we say is only what we can prove through the numbers.

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Erik Henry — Pastors, on the other hand, are not very careful.

Rich Birch — God bless them. God bless them.

Erik Henry — I love them; I’m one of them.

Rich Birch — Yes, exactly. Exactly.

Erik Henry — But we are not careful, usually, about how we use data. And it’s not because we’re…

Rich Birch — Right. Well…

Erik Henry — Go ahead.

Rich Birch — No I was going to say like that’s like one of those standard running jokes, right? Like in fact I think it might even be in my bio where I talk about the sizes of churches I’ve worked at, and I even make the joke I’m like those are not senior pastor numbers. Those are actual numbers. Like because you know we all we all and I’ve… listen, the senior pastors I’ve worked for amazing gentlemen…

Erik Henry — Yeah.

Rich Birch — But they all this the guys I worked for had this propensity of like yeah, there’d be a room of whatever a thousand people, and there’s like there was at least 4000 people there today. And and so and that and we all have that – obviously they’re easy to make fun of. But we all do that. I do that. You know we we kind of skew what we see kind of fits our story. We’re constantly, there’s ah ah you know, ah a confirmation bias that we have. When when you talk about behaviors and then self-reported feeling, can you give us some examples of those?

Erik Henry — Sure.

Rich Birch — Let’s pull apart that a little bit; talk to me a bit about behaviors.

Erik Henry — Sure, absolutely.

Rich Birch — What are some of the behaviors if we’re trying to get at? Look under the hood, what’s actually happening in our churches?

Erik Henry — So questions like, ah how many times a week do you read the bible? That’s a behavior.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Erik Henry — Um, that’s something that we track. Ah another so that there’s sort of the on your own behaviors. Then there’s also the ah are you a part of of participation in some of our church programs, like for instance, are you serving on a serving team? Yes, or no. That’s ah, an important question for us.

Erik Henry — Are you um are you taking advantage of any of our classes or small groups. That’s another question, you know, that we’re trying to track. So those are behaviors. Am I doing a thing; am I um am I participating in a program? But then when it comes to self-reported feelings. It’s how how connected do you feel to other believers? Now that is a very soft number.

Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.

Erik Henry — Do you know what I’m saying? That’s a 0 to 5 how connected do you feel to other believers at Central Christian Church. That the number 4 means almost nothing.

Rich Birch — Right.

Erik Henry — Now what it what what it does do is you can start to track over time where that number moves to. So if if on average you’re 2.1 this year, and a year later you’re at 4.2 – whoa! Whoa! We did we must have done something. Something happened. Or you go the other direction. Ooo we’ve got a problem.

Rich Birch — Right.

Erik Henry — But the first time you measure it a 4.0 means literally nothing, you know?

Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, it’s just a…

Erik Henry — And so those are the when it comes to self-reported feelings about spiritual maturity, you’re measuring the change. Not the actual number.

Rich Birch — Okay, that’s good. I love that. Now, so a part of what I hear you saying is actually really driving to doing more surveys, asking people to reflect on their their own.

Erik Henry — Yes.

Rich Birch — There’s obviously a couple different kinds of data – one is just like how many people are in groups. But another one is like are you in a group? That’s two different ways to look at it. Help me understand what place do surveys fit in in the way you’re using data, where you’re gathering gathering data, and then how that helps you in, you know, making decisions at the church.

Erik Henry — Surveys are huge for us. Um, because trying to to, you know, you can you can count the number of people who go to your classes in small groups. You can count your attendance, you can count other things, but it doesn’t doesn’t give you all that much information actually.

Rich Birch — Right.

Erik Henry — So there’s a difference between um, the number of people who show up in seats and the amount of times per month on average your your person, your people attend church. So how many times per month do you… you can’t get that in any way other than a survey. Um.

Rich Birch — Right.

Erik Henry — There’s no real way to pull that off. So surveys for us are really important. We’ve gotten we’ve decided that we’re doing two surveys a year.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Erik Henry — We’re doing one every six months. So for me, there are there are four things that we are really careful about with surveys. Number one simplicity. It’s got to be simple. It’s got to be…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Erik Henry — …clear and easy… and the second one is clarity. got to be absolutely clear with your question. They can’t be they can’t have to think about it like, what do they mean by that? Specificity. Each question has got to be directly aimed…

Rich Birch — Driving behavior. Yep.

Erik Henry — …at a question that you want an answer to. And the fourth one, and I’m this might be the most important one, it’s brevity. You cannot ask more than 10 questions.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Erik Henry — And they but it better be very simple short questions if they’re 10 of them. Um, because people will not fill it out.

Rich Birch — Yeah I… Okay, let’s talk about these two.

Erik Henry — Yeah

Rich Birch — Let’s keep pause here and drive driving on this a little bit. So you’re doing two big surveys a year. Um are you doing those like on weekends, slowing down the service, speed bump. Okay guys, either take out your phone, or you know here’s a piece of paper. Talk us through functionally what does that look like.

Erik Henry — Yeah, yeah, we do. Um we we do two things with each of those surveys. Number one we send out send it out on email to everybody. The truth is we’ve decided Google Form is the best way to do it.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Erik Henry — I mean there’s lots of other things [inaudible]…

Rich Birch — Yeah, there’s fancy stuff but um.

Erik Henry — …Survey Monkeys, but what we found with our people because we are blue collar um, church, our people are like if you’re going to want me to learn a new thing to take a survey I’m not doing it.

Rich Birch — Right, right, right. Okay.

Erik Henry — And so everybody knows Google; everybody knows Google Forms, so we just send a link to a Google form. Click, click, click, click, click – it’s less than a minute usually that it takes to do a survey.

Rich Birch — And what and what um, give me a sense of maybe a couple stories around stuff that’s changed at the church because of these surveys. That like, hey you know we we learned something here or it confirms something that was going on, um you know, that ended up kind of driving a different behavior.

Erik Henry — Yeah, one one of the main there was a huge shift post pandemic in that number that I just talked about when it comes to how many times people come to church. It used to be less than two.

Rich Birch — Right.

Erik Henry — Um, now we’re over three, so which is a major shift. So we have ah you know our our numbers are still not… in-person numbers are still not quite back to what they were pre-pandemic. Um, but the people that we have are coming more often. And so that just changes your communication strategies. It used to be we had to say something for four weeks…

Rich Birch — Right.

Erik Henry — …before everybody would hear it. It’s not the same anymore.

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Erik Henry — So that changes our communication. That’s a small one. But they’re just other things.

Rich Birch — No, that’s a good example.

Erik Henry — Yep.

Rich Birch — Okay, so now I so ah one of the churches I served in, um, they had 2, 3 decades of they did an annual survey which was a great great practice. And we worked very hard to not change the questions…

Erik Henry — Yes.

Rich Birch — …because what we were trying to do was to try to get year over year, talk us through that. Ah, what does that look like?

Erik Henry — Very important. And I’m sort of with our staff I’m like, hey what we have is what we have.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Erik Henry — Don’t don’t suggest more. Don’t don’t… because that’s the there I mean listen, and it’s not their fault.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Erik Henry — They’re like, oh man this is great. We’re getting all this information. I would love to get more information.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Erik Henry — I’d love to get different… I’d like to hear and that’s a great thing. You can’t do it. You gotta say, what is the stuff that matters the most? Because you cannot get people who are like, another survey are you kidding me?

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Erik Henry — Or a 25 question survey? Never gonna fill it out. You know?

Rich Birch — Yeah, I wonder if um, would you be willing to share us like a PDF or something that shows that…

Erik Henry — Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah.

Rich Birch — …whatever the 10 questions you use – that that’s great. We’ll put that in the show notes, friends, so you can see that because you should be doing this is a best practice.

Rich Birch — I I want to come back to something you said there, ah because it connected to another idea I was thinking about which was, so you’re saying, hey you’re seeing that people are saying that they’re coming more. They’re actually their average ah number of times a month has gone up which is actually, I would say if you were to ask pastors across the country, they would say it’s gone the opposite direction.

Erik Henry — Right.

Rich Birch — So you’re seeing a trend that’s different now I actually think the deeper point is most people don’t know, they’re just guessing.

Erik Henry — Right.

Rich Birch — They’re blaming their lower attendance on that.

Erik Henry — Yep.

Rich Birch — Um, but you actually know that. How have you seen… how have you used the data to compare to national trends?

Erik Henry — Yeah.

Rich Birch — I’m sure that’s a part of the conversation of you know the way you’ve thought about these things.

Erik Henry — Yeah, so one of the other things that I think is really important is you have to um, you have to think about the the skew of all of your data. So everything that we do, because we do in-person in the services we allow people to do it right in the service and we do email. Everything that you get, we had 305 responses to our survey this last survey. Um every one that you get is skewed because it’s somebody who is willing to fill out a survey. So there is a correlation…

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Erik Henry — …between someone who’s willing to fill out a survey and someone who’s willing to come to church more times a week or a month.

Rich Birch — A month. Yeah.

Rich Birch — And so ah so if you… for us to compare our 3.1 number with the national average, which I think right now is 1.6 or 1.7…

Rich Birch — It’s just under 2. Yeah, yeah, yep.

Erik Henry — Yeah um I don’t think that’s a fair comparison.

Rich Birch — Right.

Erik Henry — Because usually it’s Barna who’s doing that research and they know what they are doing. And they are getting very ah um, they are getting sample sizes that are absolutely random. We are not. And so…

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Erik Henry — The the the statistician in me is like we can’t compare those two numbers. Our 3.1 is not equal to their 1.7. because…

Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, your 3.1 is compared to, you know, friends that maybe are aren’t tracking along, the 3.1 is most relevant as compared to your 2.4 three, four years ago.

Erik Henry — Exactly right.

Rich Birch — Because that tells you that difference. It’s it’s hard to make that comparison to other churches and understand, you know, what does that, you know, what does that look like it.

Erik Henry — You know and it goes back to it goes back to the question of what being very careful about what you’re saying you are measuring. Because we’re not actually measuring our whole church. We’re we’re measuring a sample of our church…

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Erik Henry — …that’s willing to talk to us. Um, and those are that’s a different question. And it goes back to also to you know what do you do with the information? The pastor always has the best of intentions.

Rich Birch — Bright.

Erik Henry — But you know I hear all the time I hear them saying things like, you know all you have to do is read your Bible every day, pray every day, um join a small group, give, and you know here’s this list of 5 things and you will be spiritually mature. And um, that sounds great… because what they do is they see this data and they’re like hey people who are are spiritually mature are doing all of these things. And so they think it’s a cause and sometimes it is. But the reality is they’re they’re overstepping. There’s a difference between causation and correlation.

Rich Birch — And correlation. Yeah.

Erik Henry — And so um, when you have those those ah the pastors who want to push all of these um behaviors, if behavior is the is the mark of maturity, you end up in the end with a little bit of a new kind of legalism.

Rich Birch — Oh that’s a good insight.

Erik Henry — Because it’s like if if you just check the boxes then you’re good. And that’s not how Jesus led.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Erik Henry — That’s not how he taught. And it’s much more complicated than that and so but data is wonderful. It can be used in a way that can end up getting you to a new kind of legalism.

Rich Birch — Yeah that’s a great insight. Very, very good insight there. You know, I’ve similarly I’ve struggled with this tension of um, we do want to be clear. And so lots of churches, we all have the like whatever the five things are. You know, these are the you know, get on a team, give, be in a small group, you know, attend services, bring a friend – something like that. And ah you know for years I’ve said that that is super reductionist, and is actually not that high of a bar. Like when I when I would look at what Jesus says he says you know, follow the narrow road.

Erik Henry — Yes.

Rich Birch — And like give it all up and follow me. I’m like that doesn’t sound easy. But we have to come up… There’s a tension there because we do want to we have to communicate something…

Erik Henry — Right.

Rich Birch — …that helps people take a next step…

Erik Henry — Correct.

Rich Birch — …but it it can be super reductionist. So let’s look under the hood a little bit on on questions that you’ve asked. So I’m going to ask you either extreme. On one side ah, question that you keep asking that you’re like we probably should stop asking that question because it’s it’s not helpful, like we’ve had the same answer for so long. It’s it’s not helpful.

Erik Henry — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Or what’s the one question that you don’t ask today that you’re tempted by your team. You’re like, oh maybe we should put this one in here. Do you have do you have anything on either side that that would kind of stretch our thinking a little bit?

Erik Henry — Ah sure. Yeah I can give you the one like the first one where you you…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Erik Henry — …we asked a question for a little while that was that had to do with the fruit of the Spirit because we’re thinking okay maturity will produce fruit.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Erik Henry — So love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness – the whole thing. Um and so what we started doing was having people rate on a 0 to 5 how those fruit are being lived out in their lives. Again, this is a self-reporting thing, right? So this is self-reported feelings about the fruit in their life. And we did that over time and guess what? Nothing ever changed it. What what I what you…

Rich Birch —Oh interesting.

Erik Henry — What you found was that the it was just an average of how people feel about themselves in general, and that just doesn’t go anywhere.

Rich Birch — Oh interesting.

Erik Henry — And so it just turned out to be a a waste of time.

Rich Birch — Right. One to cut off the list. Oh that’s good. That’s interesting. Anything on the other side that you’re tempted to be like, oh or or the one, or maybe another way to phrase that, is is there a team member that keeps hounding you that like we’ve got to do this. Like, you know, we’ve got to have this, you know, this question in that you’ve resisted, you know, is there’s anything on that end?

Erik Henry — Yes. One of the thing that comes to mind is ah is marketing.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Erik Henry — So marketing is such a difficult thing to measure, the the effect of marketing. And so when we talk about marketing, we just desperately want ah data. And so we were like what about a question that is about how you were invited to church. Or what you used to invite someone to church. And the problem is it just changes so much.

Rich Birch — Right right.

Erik Henry — And and it’s different we have different strategies all the time. And so I know that there’s there are some people that would love for us to add some of those kind of questions. Um, but I just don’t, again, you just have to make the the call about what are you trying, what is the most important thing.

Erik Henry — And we have, you know, I don’t know if if your your church or other churches you use KPIs – you know, key performance indicators, and and our goals. And so we have KPIs for our whole church.

Rich Birch — Right.

Erik Henry — And so most of our questions are directed toward measuring our KPIs, not just whatever’s out there. But but what are the things that are most the key performance indicators for our church as a whole. What are those things, and we that’s what we use ah to to decide what questions we ask.

Rich Birch — Love it. Um, when you ah survey—so you come up those to twice a year—what’s the tenor of the staff environment? Are people excited by this? Are they looking forward to it? Are they nervous? What do you do to ensure that, you know, that that your your team kind of is prepared and then buys in – what does all that look like?

Erik Henry — Yeah, the plus is we got a fricking great staff culture.

Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.

Erik Henry — I mean our staff culture is fantastic, and so everybody loves it.

Rich Birch — Okay, great.

Erik Henry — Nobody’s… I think there’s a little bit of of nervousness because this isn’t the only surveying we do. We actually do ah volunteer satisfaction surveys…

Rich Birch — Okay, right. Yep.

Erik Henry — twice a year as well. Um, part of the thing is you know you don’t know how volunteers are feeling about your staff because, again, they love them. And I always tell my staff I say listen, if you can’t make your volunteers like you, there’s a problem. You know what I’m saying?.

Rich Birch — Sure sure.

Erik Henry — Like if you can’t get a volunteer volunteer to say, hey I think that this staff member is great…

Rich Birch — Yes, yeah.

Erik Henry — …that’s like that’s the highest priority…

Rich Birch — That’s base. Yep. Yes, yep.

Erik Henry — …that’s bare minimum your volunteers better like you.

Rich Birch — Yep, yep.

Erik Henry — And so um and so I I do think there’s been a little bit of nervousness surrounding those. But we’ve now we’ve now just this year moved to a single volunteer satisfaction survey that goes to every for every staff member. It took us a while to come up with the questions, and I can share those too.

Rich Birch — That would be great. We’ll take it. That’d be great.

Erik Henry — Um, but you know, what what questions were would work across the board um, that would actually give us an understanding of how a staff member is doing, that kind of a thing. So.

Rich Birch — Um, yeah because I’ve struggled. We’ve struggled, and so we have combined kind of both of these together into one.

Erik Henry — Yeah, okay.

Rich Birch — And um, have done that kind of, for lack of better word, customer satisfaction stuff and that has driven um decisions around staffing stuff.

Erik Henry — Yes, absolutely.

Rich Birch — And so we’ve tried to not like, hey friends like don’t freak out about this. It’s good. Again, it’s the same thing – there’s no bad information. There’s just information if we don’t like. But we’d rather know so that we can improve. And and there was a season—it’s not so much, you know, it’s not all the time—but there was a season where it was like that kind of freaked people out. They were like oh my goodness. What. Because people are worried.

Erik Henry — Yeah, yes.

Rich Birch — And I’m like well, you know, it’s it’s going to be… In in one way I kind of took that as a compliment because I was like okay that means that people are taking it serious and they realize we’re taking it serious.

Erik Henry — Right.

Rich Birch — We’re not just this isn’t just like here’s a bunch of random ideas, and like okay well we’ll go back to doing the things we did the way we did it before. So…

Erik Henry — Exactly right.

Rich Birch — Interesting. Are there any other surveys that you do that you might be kind of interested to kind of touch on? This has been a really helpful conversation.

Erik Henry — Honestly I think we we try to keep it at that.

Rich Birch — Right.

Erik Henry — Those are the two main things. Otherwise we’re we’re going to end up with a ton of… Oh, the other thing that will always happen is the lead pastor is always going to be like, hey we’re thinking about this decision, let’s do a survey. Let’s let’s do a survey. And so unless it is unbelievably important I push back on that.

Rich Birch — Okay, and why is that? Why is that? That seems like a good use of that.

Erik Henry — Right. Survey fatigue.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Erik Henry — I I want to make sure that we continually when we do them um… Oh the other thing I’ll say is that we we feel like we we have dropped the ball, and are going to are trying to do better at finding ways to release the information that people have given us. You know, they don’t want all of the details of every little thing.

Rich Birch — Right.

Erik Henry — But to be able to say, hey thank you for taking this survey, here’s what we found out. Um, we have we’ve dropped the ball on that and this year we’re really trying to to turn that around.

Rich Birch — Yeah, because people are more likely to give us information if we if they see, oh look they they… You know it’s like any conversation, it’s a conversation – you talked and now we’re responding.

Erik Henry — Yep, exactly right.

Rich Birch — We’re saying oh yeah, we heard you say this and here’s some changes. Well this has been just so good. What a rich conversation. And you know hope, friends, as you’re listening in, you’re catching a little bit. There’s a ton we could talk about here. Ah but super helpful. I appreciate you sending us those. We’ll have those links in the in the show notes. Anything else just as we’re kind of wrapping up today’s episode you could share or you’re thinking about, Erik?

Erik Henry — Ah, yeah, like I love your the the unSeminary concept, the you know what do you wish… and I you know I was thinking about that as I prepared and I thought to myself you know what I really wish? I’m not a seminary graduate. Um I’m a math teacher; I’ve been in ministry since I was twenty years old. But um, but I I feel like the people who come out of bible college or seminary sometimes now don’t really understand the complexity of ministry.

Rich Birch — That’s true.

Erik Henry — That um, that it is so much more complex than we like to make it in a classroom. I mean the ah, part of the complexity comes because your your life becomes revolved around this ministry as a pastor, Executive Pastor, whatever you are, which also means all your friendships are part of this.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so true.

Erik Henry — And all of the people that you lead are are part are friends, and those dual relationships are so complex. So I have to lead this person who’s who’s also the person that is my friend, or my wife is best friends with his wife, and now I’ve got to I have to lead…

Rich Birch — That’s so true.

Erik Henry —…and and challenge and make decisions surrounding these things. It is just so much more… and you you have the relational side, but then you also on the other hand have what I call running the church machine. You know?

Rich Birch — Yep.

Erik Henry — As an executive pastor part of your job is to keep the machine running.

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Erik Henry — To make decisions that make sure that you have ah a future as a church.

Rich Birch — Right. Yeah.

Erik Henry — Um, and so but sometimes that is a tension with the relationships. And learning to live in the tension is one thing I really wish I had known earlier in my ministry, was basically first of all everything takes longer than you think it should.

Rich Birch — True, that is very true.

Erik Henry — Everything takes longer than you think it should. But if you do the right thing, I know that sounds so stupid, I know that sounds so obvious, but man the right thing is is sometimes a hard thing to find when you’re living in the tension between the relationships, the people that you love, the people who are mad, the people the ah the machine of the church that you are responsible for, it gets very very complicated. And you have to ask yourself which voices matter in that conversation.

Rich Birch — Right.

Erik Henry — What priorities matter in that conversation. And and in the middle of it, we can convince ourselves what we what what we think is right because it’s easier. Or other people can help us help convince us of what we should do. But there is this thing I find more often than not, that if I quiet myself I can normally find what’s right. And if I just am willing to do the right thing and give it time to work itself out, everything does.

Rich Birch — Yeah it’s so good. Well and there’s so much, particularly I find in our roles as Executive Pastors, there’s there’s a lot of decisions that we make that are um, they do get at the the very core of why do we exist as an organization. Um and they’re really important but they’re not necessarily seen. They’re like, you know, they’re kind of like secondary or they’re behind the scenes…

Erik Henry — Yes.

Rich Birch — …or they’re… but but man, if we if we cut the corners there, if we um and you know there’s extreme examples of that, obviously, where organizations get into fraud and all kinds of super, you know, bad stuff.

Erik Henry — Right.

Rich Birch — But you know you’re not ah nobody listening in is doing that. But we can make other compromising decisions that aren’t the right decision that aren’t the right thing that aren’t pushing us towards the kind of church God wants us to to be. And yeah, that’s just a really good word. I really appreciate that, Erik.

Rich Birch — This has been a fantastic conversation. I thank you so much for being on today. If people want to track with you, track with the church, where do we want to send them online? And friends I would encourage you to do, this is a fantastic church; Erik’s a great leader. Where where do we want to send them online?

Erik Henry — We’re at centralwired.com and and then we got all the you know Facebook, Instagram, all those other things too.

Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.

Erik Henry — But um, in general that’s that’s kind of the place to catch us.

Rich Birch — Love it.Thanks so much, Erik. I appreciate you being here today, sir. Thank you so much.

Erik Henry — Thank you – really appreciate it, Rich.