The Pastorate Podcast

Show Notes:

• Jon Guerra's Website
• The Pastorate Conference
• The Pastorate's City Meetups

Episode Notes:

In this conversation Jason is joined by Jon Guerra, singer-songwriter and self-proclaimed creator of Monday morning prayer music. Jon is the voice behind albums like Keeper of Days, Ordinary Ways, and most recently JESUS, and he'll be joining us at The Pastorate Conference on May 11-13, 2027 at Relate Church in Surrey, British Columbia. Jason and Jon discuss the formative power of music, why art can reach the heart in ways a list of facts can't, and how beauty can put us in contact with the living Christ. In the back half of the conversation, Jon opens up the story behind JESUS, an album that began as a personal effort to be reacquainted with the person of Christ through slow, repeated reading of the Gospels. He and Jason talk about wanting the whole Jesus, the one who both consoles and the one who confronts, rather than a pacified or personalized version of him. They close with Jon's creative process, how he protects joy in his work, and how pastors can better see and partner with the artists in their churches.

Jason and Jon discuss:

• Why music forms us "from the outside in," and why prayer is an antidote to a culture constantly appealing to our affections,
• How art works like a parable, reaching the heart in ways explanation can't,
• Bearing witness to the pain of the world, and how beauty can serve people when our words can't,
• How reading the Gospels again and again became the album JESUS,
• Wanting the person of Jesus rather than only his effects, and Peter’s breakfast on the beach,
• Writing "fragments, not songs," and why Jon guards his calendar to keep his creative work joyful,
• and how pastors can see, honour, and partner with the artists in their congregations.

Partners:

• Get practical resources and training to help your church develop a healthy and sustainable approach to global mission. Learn more about Global Missions Toolbox.
• ⁠We couldn't do the work we do at The Pastorate without your generous support. We invite you to pray, share, and give towards seeding a hope-filled future for the Canadian church.⁠

Show Notes:

• Tish Harrison Warren's Website
• What Grows in Weary Lands: On Christian Resilience
• The Pastorate's City Meetups
• The Pastorate Conference
• The Pastorate’s Lead Pastor Fellowship

Episode Description:

In this conversation, Jason sits down with Tish Harrison Warren, Anglican priest, former New York Times columnist, and author of What Grows in Weary Lands: On Christian Resilience. Tish opens a window into her life in Austin, Texas and she shares about how she and her husband accidentally planted a church after inheriting a grieving group of parishioners. Jason and Tish talk about her years writing on faith for The New York Times, and the strange work of context switching between public discourse and the pulpit.

In the back half of the conversation, they turn to What Grows in Weary Lands, a book born out of Tish's own season of weariness, spiritual dryness, and disorientation. Drawing on the Desert Fathers and Mothers, John of the Cross, and a long line of old friends from church history, Tish explains why she refused to write a Christian self-help book and the importance surrender plays in christian maturity and formation. She and Jason close by unpacking three unique paths that we can take in the face of pain: numbing out, flaming out, or going deep.

This is a rich conversation for pastors who find themselves weary as Tish offers a hopeful reminder that in the hands of a creative and good God, nothing is wasted.

Jason and Tish discuss:

• How she and her husband came to lead an accidental church plant,
• Writing on faith for a broad, often skeptical readership at The New York Times, and the personal cost that came with it,
• Tish's season of weariness, spiritual dryness, and God's seeming distance, when the good things in her life were wearing her down,
• Why the desert is a necessary stage of the spiritual life, and why trying to hurry through it can mean missing its gift,
• How the desert exposes our sin and need for control while deepening our understanding of grace,
• The three paths of numb out, flame out, or go deep, and how workaholism can make numbing out look holy,
• and how going deep with God prepares us to go deep with the people around us.

Partners

• Through Everyday Seminary, The Way College offers short, thoughtfully curated courses and intensives that bring seminary-level teaching on Scripture and discipleship to anyone. Use the code “PASTORATE” for three months of free access.
• We couldn't do the work we do at The Pastorate without your generous support. We invite you to pray, share, and give towards seeding a hope-filled future for the Canadian church.

Show Notes

• The Pastorate Conference
• The Pastorate City Meetups
• Meetup Speaker: Heath Hardesty
• Meetup Speaker: Darrell Johnson
• Ed Stetzer's Website
• Ed Stetzer's Podcast: ChurchLeaders Podcast

Episode Notes

In today’s conversation, Jason sits down with Ed Stetzer, Dean of Talbot School of Theology at Biola University and Teaching Pastor at Mariners Church, to talk about ministry in a disorienting cultural moment, a health crisis he's still in the middle of, and what it actually takes to form pastors well. Ed opens up candidly about being six weeks out from major spinal surgery for a rare medical condition, and what it's meant to trust God's providence without knowing how much of his mobility will return. From there, Jason and Ed trace Ed's own story: planting a church at 21 in the inner city of Buffalo with no theological education, pastoring the English-language service of a Chinese church in his early twenties, and the PhD in missiology that grew out of it. Ed talks about what he's building at Talbot through a model called Talbot Embedded, cohort-based theological education planted inside local churches in cities like Chicago, Nashville, and Honolulu, designed to give pastors both rigorous scholarship and tangible spiritual formation.

The back half of the conversation turns to church planting, preaching, and the small church. Ed makes the case for why he's still bullish on planting, why he regularly offers to preach for free at churches under a hundred people, and how preaching itself has shifted toward more depth and more willingness to address controversial topics head-on. This is a rich conversation for pastors walking through their own seasons of difficultly, for anyone thinking about the future of theological education, and for leaders who are asking questions about the future of small rural churches in Canada.

Jason and Ed discuss:

• What it's been like to preach and lead publicly while recovering from emergency spinal surgery and not knowing how much will heal,
• His early years church planting in Buffalo at 21 with no seminary training, and pastoring the English service of a Chinese congregation,
• Talbot Embedded, the model for bringing seminary-level theological education into local churches in cities without strong seminary access,
• Why he thinks the wave of church planting has crested even though the need for it hasn't,
• His habit of offering to preach for free at churches under a hundred people,
• How multicultural and multigenerational churches, especially in Canadian cities like Vancouver and Toronto, are wrestling with what comes after being a safe cultural harbor for first generation immigrants,
• How North American preaching has shifted over the last 20 years toward more depth and more willingness to address controversial topics directly.

Partners

• Get practical resources and training to help your church develop a healthy and sustainable approach to global mission. Learn more about Global Missions Toolbox.
• We couldn't do the work we do at The Pastorate without your generous support. We invite you to pray, share, and give towards seeding a hope-filled future for the Canadian church.

Show Notes:

• Forest City Community Church
• Alpha Canada's case study on Forest City Community Church
• The Pastorate's City Meetups

• The Pastorate Conference
• The Pastorate Pastors Retreat

Episode Notes:

In this conversation, Jason sits down with Rob Hogendoorn, founding and lead pastor of Forest City Community Church in London, Ontario, to talk about planting and leading one church for over three decades, what it's cost and given his family along the way, and what's fueling his hope for the church in Canada right now.

Rob traces his path from a life-changing encounter with Jesus as a boy, through planting Forest City Community Church from scratch in the mid-90s, to the practices and relationships that have sustained him ever since: a renewed passion for evangelism, a decades-long peer community of fellow church planters, and a handful of ordinary, everyday encounters that keep reminding him people are hungrier for God than the prevailing narrative suggests. He shares an honest look at what his family paid along the way, and offers an invitation for pastors across Canada to let down their nets again.

In this episode you'll hear:

• What Rob's adult kids told him about growing up inside a church plant,
• The mid-90s "Phones for You" cold-call campaign that filled Forest City Community Church's very first Sunday with 172 people,
• Why building the church's DNA around 20 percent lifelong believers and 80 percent not-yet-connected people has kept its evangelistic edge for three decades,
• The visit to HTB that reignited Rob's own front-line evangelism and made Alpha central to the church,
• The longtime peer group of fellow church planters that shifted from tactical survival talk to soul-level honesty,
• Why COVID was the hardest season of Rob's ministry.

Partners

• We couldn't do the work we do at The Pastorate without your generous support. We invite you to pray, share, and give towards seeding a hope-filled future for the Canadian church.
• Contact John Wright at Generis for help cultivating a culture of generosity in your church.

Show Notes:

• The Pastorate's City Meetups
• Jon Guerra's Music
• Tyler Staton on Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
• The Pastorate Conference

• The Pastorate Pastors Retreat
• Experience Church
• ARC Canada

Episode Notes

In this conversation, Jason sits down with Jonathan Lambert, lead pastor of Experience Church in Calgary and Executive Director of ARC Canada, to talk about church planting, pioneering a church planting network in Canada and what it looks like to keep a scrappy founder's spirit through organizational growth and change.

Jonathan traces his path from leading worship as a teenager in a Pentecostal church, into a worship role at Christian Life Assembly in Langley, and eventually to a defining season in Fort McMurray. There, newly stepped away from vocational ministry and unsure what was next, he had what he describes as a wake-up call in a grocery store: a profound conviction that calling belongs to every believer, not just to a platform or a job title. That shift led him and his wife Natasha into youth ministry in a local church, and then led them to plant Experience Church in Calgary in 2012.

Jason and Jonathan also dig into how Experience Church came to pioneer ARC (Association of Related Churches) in Canada, now responsible for planting 25 churches nationally. Jonathan talks candidly about the tension of staying scrappy as an organization grows, the K-12 hybrid school Experience Church started to make Christian education more accessible, and the free summer camp they run for pastors' families on Vancouver Island.

Jonathan makes the case for consistency over leaps of faith, and for what he calls "the spiritual six pack," daily habits of word, prayer, and worship, paired with a regular rhythm of tithing, fasting, and serving, as the real engine behind a transformational life and a healthy church.

In this episode you'll hear:

• How growing up in a Pentecostal church shaped Jonathan's love for spiritual encounter,
• The grocery store moment in Fort McMurray that reframed calling as something every believer carries,
• Why Jonathan and Natasha turned down joining a friend’s church plant in San Diego to stay in Canada and plant in Calgary instead,
• What it took to pioneer ARC in Canada, and the encouragement they received from the team at ARC USA,
• Why Experience Church started a K-12 hybrid school to make Christian education accessible for families who can't afford traditional private school,
• The story behind ARC Canada's free summer camp for pastors' families, and why proximity between pastoral families is its own form of pastoral care,
• Why leaps of faith are a subtle danger, and what Jonathan calls "the spiritual six pack," the daily and regular habits that build a steady life.

Partners

We couldn't do the work we do at The Pastorate without your generous support. We invite you to pray, share, and give towards seeding a hope-filled future for the Canadian church.

• Learn More about The Pastorate's Lead Pastor Fellowship
• Abbotsford Pentecostal Assembly
• The Pastorate Conference
• The Pastorate's City Meetups
• The Pastorate Pastors Retreat

Episode Notes

In this conversation, Jordan sits down with Dave Funk, lead pastor of Abbotsford Pentecostal Assembly and a peer facilitator in The Pastorate's Lead Pastor Fellowship. Dave and Jordan connect about both being pastors’ kids who went on to pastor under their fathers. Dave opens up about what it has been like raising his own three teenagers in the front row of church, while reflecting on his own upbringing in the church.

From there, Dave traces his journey into pastoral ministry, including growing up assuming pastoring was "his dad's thing," a season of surrender to God’s call on his life, five years serving as his father’s assistant pastor, and then the decision to leave and pastor elsewhere rather than to succeed his dad. He and his wife, Rebecca, discerned that call together, first at Bethel Church in Penticton, a declining, aging congregation they helped bring back to life, and later in Abbotsford, where he arrived in the middle of COVID to a church recovering from a difficult leadership transition.

In the back half of the conversation, Dave discusses his leadership philosophy, that compounding health in the life of the church has the power to build a consistent and healthy congregation over time. He reflects on his experience in The Pastorate's Lead Pastor Fellowship, first as a participant, now as a peer facilitator for its second intake.

Jordan and Dave discuss:

• What it's like to raise pastor's kids in the front row, and the pressure Dave tries not to pass on to his own three teenagers,
• Growing up under his dad's leadership without ever sensing a gap between who his dad was on Sunday and who he was at home,
• Serving five years as his dad's assistant pastor, and the bullets his dad took for him that he didn't learn about until years later,
• Why he chose to leave rather than succeed his dad,
• Walking into a declining, aging church in Penticton and, later, a church in Abbotsford recovering from a difficult transition,
• and his return to The Pastorate's Lead Pastor Fellowship as a peer facilitator for its second cohort.

Partners

• We couldn't do the work we do at The Pastorate without your generous support. We invite you to pray, share, and give towards seeding a hope-filled future for the Canadian church.
• Contact John Wright at Generis for help cultivating a culture of generosity in your church.

• The Pastorate’s Lead Pastor Fellowship
• Emotionally Healthy Discipleship
• Hope Church NYC
• Beautiful, Disappointing, Hopeful by Drew Hyun
• A Grace Disguised by Dr. Jerry Sittser
• Water from a Deep Well by Dr. Jerry Sittser
• The Pastorate Conference
• The Pastorate's City Meetups
• The Pastorate Pastors Retreat

Episode Notes

Today’s episode is part three of our summer series exploring our pastoral formation cohorts here at The Pastorate. This episode features Drew Hyun and Dr. Jerry Sittser, profiling their time spent with last year’s cohort of The Lead Pastor Fellowship. 

Drew Hyun is the Lead Pastor of Hope Church NYC and Executive Director of Emotionally Healthy Discipleship. Drew shares the unpolished version of his own story: growing up a pastor's kid in a Korean immigrant church that split twice before he hit middle school, watching his father go from a harsh, at times violent man at home to a celebrated Christian author and speaker in Korea, and the gap that opened up between his own public ministry persona and a private life marked by hidden addiction and unprocessed rage. He traces how a chance internship exposed him to Pete Scazzero's "iceberg" picture of discipleship, the ten percent above the surface and ninety percent buried beneath it, and how that encounter became the seed of emotionally healthy discipleship in his own life. Drew confesses that it's entirely possible to do ministry for God without God, and that the deepest work of leadership is letting Jesus into the deepest and darkest parts of our hearts. 

Following Drew, Dr. Jerry Sittser, Professor Emeritus of Theology and Senior Fellow at Whitworth University, teaches on pastoral care through irreversible loss, the kind that permanently changes the landscape of a life. Drawing on his own experience, losing his wife, mother, and daughter in a single car accident, Dr. Sittser rejects the idea of "stages of grief" and other neat recovery paradigms in favor of learning to carry loss for good, being transformed rather than finding resolution. He offers pastors concrete counsel: resist rushing to answers, know which biblical text fits which moment, help people ritualize mourning instead of just enduring it, and help them build a community of people who can shoulder their burdens.

In this episode you'll hear:

• Drew's story of growing up a pastor's kid inside two church splits, including a church fistfight that the LAPD had to break up,
• An exploration of the phrase: "Jesus may live in your heart, but Grandpa lives in your bones,"
• Why it's entirely possible to do ministry for God without God, even while seeing real spiritual fruit,
• Pete Scazzero's iceberg image and how it became the seed of a discipleship model that goes beneath the surface,
• Dr. Sittser's own story of catastrophic loss, and why he rejects "stages of grief" in favor of integration and transformation,
• How to discern when to speak and when to sit in silence with someone carrying irreversible loss,
• Practical postures for walking with people through suffering. 

Partners

• We couldn't do the work we do at The Pastorate without your generous support. We invite you to pray, share, and give towards seeding a hope-filled future for the Canadian church.
• If you are seeking ways to guide your congregation into the next step of their faith journey, we welcome you to explore the Canadian Bible Society’s Ministry Toolkit. The Ministry Toolkit is designed to help your church or ministry deliver online or in-person Bible-based programs for the special audiences you may serve.

Show Notes

• Learn More about The Emerging Leaders Lab
• Coastline Church
• The Pastorate Conference
• The Pastorate's City Meetups
• The Pastorate Pastors Retreat

Episode Notes

On today's episode Jordan sits down with Laura Liira, campus pastor of Coastline Church West Shore on Vancouver Island and participant in the 2025-2026 class of The Emerging Leaders Lab. Laura was born in Victoria into a nominal Catholic home, and was reintroduced to Christianity though her teenage years. During a gap year in London England, she encountered Jesus in a new way and committed to serve him for the rest of her life. Laura’s story is one marked by saying yes to whatever service opportunity was in front of her. She talks honestly about God-given dreams and the time they take to mature, and the journey from church intern to Campus Pastor.

In the back half of the conversation Laura and Jordan turn to her year in the Emerging Leaders Lab, where she was the only woman in a cohort of male pastors with Keith Taylor as her guide. Laura reflects on how that band of brothers received her, prayed over her, and still meets together in a monthly rhythm. She reflects on women in ministry across the Canadian church landscape, the grit of pastoring a mobile church that sets up and tears down a middle school gym every Sunday, and she shares about what is filling her with hope right now.

In this episode you'll hear:

• How a gap year in London, meant for partying, became the year Laura met Jesus,
• How saying yes to the next thing in front of you is a simple act of obedience that can open doors to opportunity,
• The dreams she buried with her husband and how God dug them up in his own timing,
• Being the only woman in a cohort of male pastors, and the "red rose" word that welcomed her in,
• The unique challenges of a mobile church,
• Why the fire she sees in young people across Canada has her so full of hope.

Laura's story is a reminder that the most formative work in ministry rarely happens on a stage, but that it often happens in obedient acts of showing up and saying yes to what's in front of you. We trust this conversation will encourage you right where you are.

Partners

• We couldn’t do the work we do at The Pastorate without your generous support. We invite you to pray, share, and ⁠give⁠ towards seeding a hope-filled future for the Canadian church.

• Contact John Wright at Generis for help cultivating a culture of generosity in your church.

Show Notes

• Learn More about The Emerging Leaders Lab
• Glenn Packiam’s The Resilient Pastor
• Mark Buchanan’s What is Left of The Night
• Give to our $30,000 Match Campaign
• The Pastorate Conference
• The Pastorate's City Meetups
• The Pastorate Pastors Retreat

Episode Notes

This summer, we're taking you inside the two pastoral formation cohorts at the heart of The Pastorate: the Emerging Leaders Lab and the Lead Pastor Fellowship. Over four episodes, we're sharing the best teaching from this past year’s Lab and Fellowship and sitting down with participants from both programs to hear what an intentional season of formation actually does in the life of a pastor. This is the first episode of our four part series, replaying some of the best moments from last year’s Emerging Leaders Lab.

The Emerging Leaders Lab just wrapped up its third year and kicked off its fourth year. In the 2025-2026 cohort, 24 pastors gathered monthly on Zoom to sit under the teaching of a remarkable lineup of guest teachers, and to do the thing you rarely get to do with someone you've only read or listened to: ask their questions, out loud and in real time. Each guest came to teach around one of the eight formation areas that shape the Lab, covering everything from calling and community to character and craft. In this episode, our team pulled together the moments the cohort named as most impactful.

In this episode you’ll hear from:

• Glenn Packiam on why pastors need a constellation of relationships and the diverse voices every pastor needs around them: rulers, peers, sages, healers, and friends.
• Carey Nieuwhof on burning out in the middle of a decade of explosive growth, finding your line, and how this generation of pastors can finish differently.
• Helen Burns on why balance is a misaligned goal, what to anchor to instead, and the confession she keeps hearing from pastors: my soul is so tired.
• Jason Ballard on the difference between the friends you play with and the deep friends who know your shadow side, say the hard thing, and have to be pursued on purpose.
• Lance Odegard on why you can't know your calling until you know your design, blind spots and the true self, and the game-changing leadership question: how do you experience me?
• Mark Buchanan on the difference between who you're called to be and what you're called to do, and why the calling on your life can't be revoked.

With thanks to the many other voices who contributed to the Lab this past year, including Darrell Johnson, Chris Price, Mark Peters, Milissa Ewing, and Preston Pouteaux.

Partners

• Would you consider giving to our summer match campaign? Every donation in June will be matched by a generous donor up to $30,000.
• If you are seeking ways to guide your congregation into the next step of their faith journey, we welcome you to explore the Canadian Bible Society’s Ministry Toolkit. The Ministry Toolkit is designed to help your church or ministry deliver online or in-person Bible-based programs for the special audiences you may serve.

Show Notes

• The Pastorate Conference
• Give to our $30,000 June Match Campaign
• Mark Clark’s Website
• Village Church Website
• Bayside Church Website
• The Mark Clark Podcast
• The Problem of Life by Mark Clark
• The Pastorate's City Meetups
• The Pastorate Pastors Retreat

Episode Description

In today's conversation, Jason sits down with Mark Clark, the pastor who planted Village Church in British Columbia, and now the Global Senior Pastor at Bayside Church in California. Mark’s story includes an atheist upbringing in Ontario, a late-teen conversion, a dream of becoming an academic at Oxford, and a call to plant a church in one of the most secular corners of North America. What began with sixteen people in his living room grew into one of the fastest-growing churches in Canada, and Mark reflects with both gratitude and candor on the road that took him there.

Jason and Mark talk about the patience that shaped their early ministry years, waiting for the right time, the right people, and the right season to plant churches. Mark opens up his convictions around preaching, describing how he learned to speak to the skeptic and the lifelong believer in the same room, and why he refuses to choose between reaching the lost and discipling the found. He's also honest about the cost of leading through rapid growth, including the burnout seasons that left him preaching dizzy and gripping the pulpit to stay upright.

The conversation also turns to what it meant to leave the church he founded and entrust it to leaders he loves, and the insecurity that keeps many leaders from transitioning. Drawing on Zechariah 10, he candidly describes his calling as making warhorses out of sheep, a vision he holds with both conviction and a winsome humility

In this episode you'll hear:

• How an atheist kid from Ontario became a church planter in one of Canada's most secular cities,
• Why patience, the right time, people, and season, mattered more than urgency in the plant,
• How to preach to the skeptic and the lifelong believer in the same room,
• What the burnout seasons cost Mark, and the team decision that reshaped his preaching,
• Why he left the church he founded, and what it's been like to watch it flourish under new leadership,
• How Zechariah 10 reframed his calling around raising and releasing the next generation of leaders.

Partners

• Would you consider giving to our summer match campaign? Every donation in June will be matched by a generous donor up to $30,000.
• Generis has created a Pastorate-exclusive Generosity Cohort. Over one year, eight pastors leading churches with annual budgets under $1 million will journey together, coached by Jon Wright, who will help develop a customized generosity plan for their church. Because it’s cohort-based and designed for Canadian pastors, it offers a more affordable option than 1on1 coaching. This cohort launches in July 2026 and is limited to eight pastors. If this sounds like it could serve you and your church, you can reach out to Jon Wright here.