thinking.church podcast

If you've run a church for a short while, you'll start to see complexity creep into the life of the church. More people doing more ministries at more cost. But what if it didn't have to be this way? What if we could achieve a higher kingdom impact by focusing narrowly on a few things? In this episode, Lee Button speaks with Tony Morgan, the lead strategist of The Unstuck Group. 

About our Guest

Tony Morgan is the lead strategist of The Unstuck Group, thinking.church's sister organisation based in the U.S.A. For 14 years, Tony served on the senior leadership teams at West Ridge Church (Dallas, GA), NewSpring Church (Anderson, SC) and Granger Community Church (Granger, IN). He’s written several books and articles that have been featured with the Willow Creek Association, Catalyst and Pastors.com. Tony has also featured on the Carey Nieuwhof podcast in three episodes.

Key Points

1. What does a church need to do to get focused?
2. What are the non-negotiables to get going as a church?
3. Why should we take a risk on somebody? 
4. How do you scale what you're doing?

Key Resources

The Unstuck Group website

Killing Cockroaches by Tony Morgan

CNLP 108: TONY MORGAN ON WHY CHURCHES GET STUCK…AND HOW TO GET YOUR CHURCH MOVING AGAIN - Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast with Tony Morgan

CNLP 140: TONY MORGAN ON DISCOVERING WHAT STAGE YOUR CHURCH IS AT IN ITS LIFECYCLE - Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast with Tony Morgan

CNLP 210: TONY MORGAN AND CAREY NIEUWHOF ON WHY LEADERS GROW CYNICAL AND HOW TO COMBAT WHAT APPEARS TO BE AN OCCUPATIONAL HAZARD - Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast with Tony Morgan

Church Mergers have often been thought of as a generally negative thing. We conjure up ideas of large churches eating up congregations, and the number of churches declining. However, if done properly, a church merger can be an exceptionally healthy thing. Jim Tomberlin is the master at helping churches merge in a healthy way and shows us the ways to think through merging churches successfully. 

About our Guest

Both a multisite and church merger expert, Jim began his multisite journey in the mid 1990s when he was the senior pastor of Woodmen Valley Chapel. In 2000, he went on to pioneer the multisite model at Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago. He founded Multisite Solutions in 2005 to help churches develop and implement the emerging model of location expansion. Jim gained over 20+ years of multisite and church merger experience before joining The Unstuck Group in February of 2019. 

Key Points

1.      Hi Jim, thank you so much for joining us. You’ve got quite a long history working with church mergers. Could you tell us about how you got started on your journey with helping churches merge? 

2.      With COVID-19 starting to ease, I’m sure that many churches in the U.K. may be surprised at how much re-building they need to do. Why do you think merging is a credible option for churches? 

3.      What are the biggest mistakes you’ve seen when helping churches with Mergers? 

4.      When you talk about merging, you say it’s a bit like a slow dance, how do you mean? (Lead Church, Following church) 

5.      In your book you talk about four types of mergers, the first one is a Rebirth merger. What is that? 

6.      Your second type of merger is Adoption, how is that different? 

7.      The third type of merger is Marriage, what does that look like and how do you journey to getting there? 

8.      The fourth type of merger is one you advise against, which is the Intensive Care, or ICU Merger. Could you describe that for us and why you think it’s not a great idea. 

9.      I was writing about church mergers the other day, and I likened how we’ve traditionally thought about mergers to the TV show Married At First Sight. The temptation is that churches that want to merge do it too quickly with generally bad results. What’s a healthy timescale to think about? 

10.  In the Post-COVID world, there may be many churches that won’t be financially viable with reducing congregations, or churches that can’t afford to stay open due to lack of giving over the last few months. What steps would you recommend that churches take if they’re starting to think about potentially merging?

Resources

Better Together: Making Church Mergers Work by Jim Tomberlin & Warren Bird

When the church hit lockdown, our love with Online Church quickly blossomed into a budding romance, but as time has gone on, the love has dwindled. A few months in, the church has hit the 'dark night of the soul' and we need to find ways to rekindle the love. After all, online church is here to stay, so it's worth fighting for.

Key Points

• What went well at the beginning
• Cynefin - Chaos stage
• What has gone wrong?
  • Richard Hall Quote
• Start with Who
  • Awareness
  • Consideration
  • Acquisition
  • Service
  • Loyalty
• How to re-kindle the love
  • Get clarity on the purpose
  • What makes you click a link?
  • Tell people in advance
  • Give a clear next step
  • Design your service for on-demand viewing

Resources

Cynefin Framework - Anecdote YouTube Video

Leading a Worship Team can be a challenging job. You've got the unenviable task of having to bring a group of creative individuals together into a group and to play music that is excellent and leads people into the presence of God. However, many worship teams haven't done the groundwork of why they do what they do, and this can cause tension, disagreements and a lack of cohesion. During lockdown, this has been made more difficult as we've been unable to get the team into the same room to practice. So, how can you still lead a worship team when you're in lockdown? We also look at running a worship team in a multisite setting. How do you lead a worship team across multiple locations? 

About our Guest

Lee Baker is the Lead Worship Pastor of 12Stone Church, Atlanta, GA. 12Stone are a multisite church with 8 locations across the northeast Atlanta area. Lee has a wealth of knowledge in leading worship teams for many years and has also started Meta, an online Worship Training academy. 

Points Covered

1.     Lee Baker, the last time Lee Button and I met with you in Atlanta, you were talking passionately about how churches need to understand their worship mission statement. What is that, and why is it important?

2.     We’re in a situation at the moment where the whole of the UK is in lockdown, so there will be worship teams starting to wonder how they can still function as a worship team in this time. How do you think worship teams should be approaching worship right now?

3.     You’ve created Meta, which is an online training platform. What lead you to start Meta?

4.     What advantages can be gained from moving your team online, even after Coronavirus?

5.     Can online ever be a replacement for live rehearsals?

6.     What do you need to get started with moving your Worship Team time online?

7.     Most worship teams in the UK are volunteer teams, and most worship pastors are volunteer worship pastors. How can volunteer leaders grow and develop their team when there isn’t a lot of time?

8.     We first met a few years ago when my church sent me to Atlanta to speak with lots of people at 12Stone, and you were so gracious to give me an hour of your time, where I asked you question after question about how your church ran music whilst being multisite. My main memory from that meeting was that it completely shattered some pre-conceived beliefs about how church worship should be run. In the UK, we’re still very new to the multisite world, but you’ve been running worship in a multisite setting for a long time now, how does 12Stone run worship across 8 locations?

9.     I remember in that meeting that you talked about doing the same set lists in every location. I think for many people hearing this in the UK will have never heard of doing the same setlists across multiple locations. Many people might worry that it Why did you decide to do that and how has it changed the feeling of worship being spontaneous? 

10.  If a church is planning to start going multisite, what advice would you give to the worship teams?

Resources

Meta by 12Stone Worship

12Stone Worship website

With Lockdown restrictions starting to ease, the church doors are able to be opened once more. However, there is so much more to opening the church than just unlocking and starting as per usual. How your church carefully considers how to re-open its building in a legal, responsible and ethical way will help your church gain reputation with your community and bring safety and care to your church congregation.

About Our Guest
Lorne Campbell is a Partner of WeAreBPG and runs ChurchOffice & CharityOffice, sister organisations of thinking.church. Lorne brings a wealth of experience in the sphere of Governance, HR & Health and Safety. Lorne lives in Witham, Essex with his wife and family. 

Key Points

• What does it mean to develop a re-opening plan?
• What are some of the fundamentals when communicating to staff teams?
• What do we need to consider from an HR point of view when staff are working from home?
• What do you do if your office is too small for social distancing and working?
• Thinking through the risk issues of re-opening
• What's the first step to putting procedures in place if you don't have any?
• How do we evaluate what to bring back?
• How to think through re-opening your auditorium 
• How are welcome teams going to be affected?
• Simple Questions to ask before re-opening
• What is the new win of Sunday Services?
• Facilitating Children and Youth when re-opening services

Small Groups tend to be the bane of ever church leader's life. They seem to work for a short time then quickly lose momentum. However, the bigger problem is that churches don't know why they're running them, and without purpose, it's hard to see them thrive. This episode will help your church give your church purpose for running small groups, as well as tips and tricks to make them successful. In this Episode Chris & Lee talk with Chris Surratt.

About our Guest
Chris Surratt s a ministry consultant and coach with more than twenty years of experience serving the local church. Chris served on the Executive Teams at Cross Point Church in Nashville, TN., and Seacoast Church in Charleston, S.C., prior to becoming the Discipleship and Small Groups Specialist for LifeWay Christian Resources. Chris is also a consultant for The Unstuck Group.

Key Points

1. You’ve seen many small groups in your time, what are the usual problems people are coming to you with?
2. So in the church world, many churches are running mid-week Bible studies and many churches are running small groups, but my guess is that most churches don’t know why they are running either. Why are small groups so important in the life of a church?
3. I’ve heard of so many different types of small groups, some are evangelistic in nature, some are focused on pastoral care and some on learning and growing. For many pastors, it’s difficult to know where they should fit, so they often try to do them all. How can pastors think about how they position their small groups in the life of the church?
4. A big factor of a group’s success is getting a group to gel together. What strategies have you found most successful in creating a group that develops relationships and community?
5. When it comes to thinking about the content of your small group sessions, what is the thinking that you use to help shape content?
6. The other thing I continually notice about small groups are that they work for a few months and then lose momentum very quickly. Many churches have started putting time limits on their groups. What’s the thinking behind this strategy, and have you found it to be effective in the long run?
7. We’re in lockdown at the moment, and we’ve already looked at some of the technology for running small groups in a previous webinar, but how does running a small group change when you’re trying to run the groups remotely?
8. Many people worry that you cannot create genuine community online. How true do you think this is?
9. Do you think there are any ways in which we can leverage online small groups once Coronavirus is gone?
10. I think that we’ve made ourselves believe that meeting in person in the only way to do small groups, and to an extent that’s right, but online isn’t all bad. What are the advantages to online vs meeting in person, and how can we utilise that once we’re meeting in person again?
11. Hopefully we’ll get out of lockdown soon, and we can all meet in person again. Houses in the U.K. are a lot smaller than in the USA. In the U.K. the average living room is 172 square feet (16 square metres) compared to 330 square feet (30 square metres) in the USA. My living room is a good size, but I could 10 people, whereas I’ve been in houses in the USA that could seat 20-30 people in their living room. How should we approach designing small groups when we are dealing with confined spaces?

Mission Statements tend to get hidden away in some dusty corner of your website. They tend to be filled with generic statements that are long and cumbersome. But what if the Mission Statement could be the reference point for every programme, activity and decision in your church? Mission Statements seek to answer the key question in your church: why.

Key Points

• Mission Statements are like The Island with Bear Grylls
• What a good mission statement does (The Mission Compass)
• The Mission of The Global Church (Kingdom come via making disciples)
• Your target market (attitudes, interests and opinions)
• Your church strengths 
• Great Commission + Target Market - Church Strengths = Too Generic
• Great Commission + Church Strengths - Target Market = Too Ego Driven
• Church Strengths + Target Market - Great Commission = Not a church

Key Resources
How a Mission Statement can stop your church walking in Circles by Chris Bright

How is our church going to thrive in the post-COVID world? With churches starting to re-open in July 2020, Chris & Lee spoke with Dale Sellers of the 95 Network about what to do, and what not to do, when re-opening your church buildings. With the U.S.A. a few weeks ahead of the U.K. Dale has priceless wisdom to share with you from his work helping churches all across the U.S.A. 

About our Guest
Dale Sellers is the Executive Director of the 95 Network, an organisation that exists to help the 95% of churches in the U.S.A. - small to mid-size churches. Dale has been in ministry for almost 40 years and is dedicated to helping small and mid-size churches get healthy. He launched Dale Sellers Leadership, Inc. in March 2014 to assist organisations in the areas of leadership, inspiration and evangelism. Since then, he's had a wide variety of coaching and consulting experience. He and his wife Gina have been married for 37 years. They have three daughters and two sons-in-law, and one grandchild!

Key Points

1. Dale, thanks so much for coming on our podcast. How have you found church during COVID-19?
2. I heard you recently say that re-opening services are more of a Sunrise than flipping a light switch. What did you mean by that?
3. In the U.K. churches are able to start services of up to 30 people from the 4th July with no singing, and I know that in the USA, in-person gatherings have already re-started. What should someone be thinking about when approaching re-opening?
4. I’ve heard a lot of people advocate for opening in-person gatherings as soon as possible on theological grounds. What are your thoughts on this?
5. And on a similar vein, I’m sure that you’ve found some really great hints and tips for people to do. What are some ways that churches can make the most of Socially Distanced Services?
6. House Watch Parties starting to be talked about, especially with Churchome in Seattle starting down this route. Is an online service with watch parties the new future of church?
7. Many churches have started to see a decline in online service attendance in recent weeks, as the novelty factor wears off. How should we think about positioning our online services post-COVID?
8. What should churches NOT do when conducting Socially Distanced services?
9. And finally, you’ve recently finished writing your new book, called Stalled. Could you tell us about that book and why you wrote it?

Key Resources
Stalled: Hope & Help For Pastors Who Thought They'd Be There By Now by Dale Sellers
Why Our Churches Can't Go Back To Normal by Chris Bright for Premier Christianity Blog