Is efficiency a godly value? And if the Good Shepherd leaves 99 sheep to find the one, what does that say about how we should be running our churches?

The guys open with King Charles's surprisingly funny speech to the U.S. Congress, a masterclass in soft power, humour and resetting an agenda without throwing a punch, before getting into the real conversation: how do you manage a church well without accidentally turning it into a business?

Stu unpacks Soul Revival's approach to project management — organised messiness, ministry slide, double-up meetings and why grace has to be baked into the structure from the start. Tim brings in Andy Crouch's cultural postures and Marshall McLuhan's medium-is-the-message warning about what happens when corporate metaphors quietly reshape how you think about ministry.

Timestamps

00:00 Welcome — fake arrogance, King Charles and the Churchill bath story
08:30 Soft power, constitutional monarchy and why Charles reset the agenda without throwing a punch
17:30 Church project management — theology, strategy and practice
21:00 The African church vs the Sydney church — context shapes everything
25:00 Metrics, growth and the danger of deterministic ministry thinking
31:00 Andy Crouch, Marshall McLuhan and why corporate metaphors aren't value-neutral
37:00 Organised messiness — Stu's philosophy of church management
43:00 The Good Shepherd, the 99% and why efficiency isn't a godly value
47:00 Isaac Gordon's late arrival and what it taught Soul Revival about grace
54:00 Ministry slide — a practical framework for holding people and mission together

Discussed on this episode:
King Charles III addresses US Congress
Andy Crouch - Culture Making
Marshall McLuhan - The Medium is the Message
Colin Marshall and Tony Payne - Trellis and Vine

Subscribe, leave a review, and send your thoughts to Joel at [email protected]