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As church leaders, we often find the post-Christmas period a time for reflection and planning. The festive season’s hustle has settled, and it’s time to ponder on our successes and the areas where we yearn for growth.

In this latest episode of the unSeminary podcast, we delve into crucial insights and strategies to transform your Christmas achievements into sustained church growth.

Reflecting on Christmas: More Than Just Numbers

Christmas is often marked by increased attendance and heightened church activity. But what does this mean for your church beyond the holiday season? This episode encourages leaders to view Christmas not just as a one-off event but as a benchmark for potential growth.

It’s about asking the big question: What if every week was like Christmas at our church? What changes and strategies would be required to accommodate and nurture this level of engagement year-round?

Five Key Areas for Church Growth

A Call to Action

As we step into the new year, let’s reframe our perspective. Let’s harness the energy and success of Christmas and channel it into long-term growth strategies. This episode isn’t just about reflection; it’s a call to action. It’s an invitation to envision and work towards a future where the extraordinary becomes the norm in our ministries.

Join us in this insightful episode to discover how your church can grow beyond the Christmas season.

Remember, what was special for Christmas this year can be normal going forward.

Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Nick Thompson, the Executive Pastor at The Living Stone Church in Denver, Colorado.

How is your church executing on its vision? If you’re a church leader looking to create a practical framework for decision-making, a Vision Frame might be just what you need. Listen to this week’s podcast as Nick shares how to bridge the gap between vision and execution in your church.

You can learn more about The Living Stone Church at www.thelivingstone.church.

There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!

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Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: CDF Capital

Since 1953, CDF Capital has helped Christians and churches embrace their part in this story by providing the 3 kinds of capital every congregation needs for growth—Financial Capital, Leadership Capital, and Spiritual Capital. At CDF Capital, we care about each of these components. When a church is properly resourced financially, spiritually, and in leadership, lives are transformed.

Sign-up to learn more about CDF Capital and how we can help your church grow. Receive a 50% discount on a monthly subscription to the CDF Capital Subscribe & Save Bundle.

Rich Birch — Hey, friends welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Super excited today for today’s conversation but looking forward to this one. We’ve got Nick Thompson with us. He is the executive pastor at a church in Colorado ah, called The Living Stone Church and they exist to expand the movement of Jesus followers across Denver, the west, and ultimately the world. It’s one of the top reproducing churches in the world and Nick he’s an executive pastor. We love executive pastors here at on unSeminary. Welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.

Nick Thompson — Yeah, great to be here. Appreciate the opportunity to be on.

Rich Birch — Yeah, what don’t you tell us about The Living Stone? Kind of fill in the picture, you know what did I miss there? What what do we, you know, what do we what do we need to to know about the church?

Nick Thompson — Yeah, yeah, so we’re ah we’re still what would we consider a church plant. And the church was planted by our lead pastor Keith Baldridge in 2016 of August. And we’ve been journeying for a while now. We’re we’re now in 2023 so we’re we’re encroaching 7 years, and it’s been a great journey. I’ve seen a lot of activity from the Lord and just just unbelievably grateful to be a part of what God’s doing through this church specifically. Um I came on board a little over 3 years ago now. So I’ve been about halfway through been a part of that and yeah, it’s just super special.

Nick Thompson — We’re in a really unique area because ah for the listeners and for those who don’t know, um, Colorado is as a whole is about 94% unreached as far as faith goes. And so there’s there’s no better time to be planting churches here locally in our our state specifically. I know there’s other areas, the west, is very similar so that’s that’s why we’re doing what we’re doing.

Rich Birch — Yeah I love talking to church leaders like yourself that are in communities that you know people don’t wake up on Sunday morning and say, hey we should go to church today. They just don’t do that in Denver.

Nick Thompson — No!

Rich Birch — And the fact that you you know they’re not like oh what what are the things we should do today? Well after we go to church… That’s just not what they’re saying in Denver. So, which I love. I think this is great. We can we can all learn and that’s my heart. That’s the kind of communities I’ve served in as well. That’s so good.

Rich Birch — Well one of the things that caught my eye my kind of got my attention ah at Living Stone was your mission. And so The Living Stone exists or your vision to expand the movement of Jesus ah, followers across Denver the west in the world. And I just I love that. That’s such a huge vision, massive. How how does that work itself out in reality? What does that look like how, you know, how are you as an executive pastor – we’ve often said in the past that executive pastors live at the intersection of execution and vision. Ah, that’s really the place that we we live at, so what does that look like for you at Living Stone?

Nick Thompson — Yeah, it’s ah it’s a great question. Um, really, that’s been the majority of my time being on staff here at The Living Stone has been to take that vision and really form good strategy systems, practical steps to help our church really start achieving that, because you know as vision goes, it’s it’s the thing from God. And you know we need to accomplish it because we’re we’re doing his his will and his work. And so it’s it’s super imperative that we’re we’re thinking and focusing on that.

Nick Thompson — So one of the things that we implemented just about a year and a half ago that has made um a lot of acceleration a lot of momentum, just a lot of inclusiveness for our people… Sometimes there’s a huge gap between vision, especially a big vision like this and how people get there. Um, what we’ve what we’ve gotten to as far as like a solution for us is we don’t want them filling in those blanks. We need to be the the forerunners of here’s here’s how we’re doing it. Here’s… the why is right there but here’s how we’re doing it. We’re gonna really spend some focus time on on getting that right.

Nick Thompson — So um, the thing that we we actually we we say we adopted because we didn’t steal it. We didn’t borrow it. We’ve used the term we adopted from one of our partner churches, Hope Church, is something that we’re terming as the the vision frame. And so it’s basically like a picture frame. You’ve got vision at the top. You’ve got values on your right. You’ve got strategy on the bottom, and then you got your measures on the left side. And having that vision frame has been super impactful, not just for us as a staff team, but also for our people to really understand, you know, why do we say no to some things? Why do we say yes to some things? Um, how does everything that we’re really going after fit with the overall big vision moment that we’re we’re calling expanding the movement of Jesus followers to Denver, the west, and the world?

Nick Thompson — And so it’s really just a ah simple frame and and the way to think about it is if it can go through that frame, it’s probably something that we should be doing or at least have on our future cast. If it can’t go through that frame, it’s definitely going to have to be tabled for now. Maybe in the future it it does make sense. But right now that’s just a no. And so it’s just really simple analytics practices to help our people um, work through that. And I I could go through that if you want me to like really what those each sections are.

Rich Birch — Yeah I would love that. I’d love to hear that I love this idea of really breaking it down and trying to close the gap between those two, vision and execution. So yeah, so so yeah talk us through maybe we’ll talk through those four and then we can come back and could get a sense of you know what what do you mean by all those words. And then how have you actually implemented and rolled that out at you know at Living Stone. So let’s let’s start start with talking through those pieces.

Nick Thompson — That’s great. Um, three of them are are really interesting to me because I truly believe that most churches are going to do something similar to what we’re doing in in three of these categories. They’re just maybe worded a little bit differently. You know, when I look across America and I’m looking at like what churches are doing as far as their vision to some level they’re they’re pretty much similar. The great commission is there for a reason.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Nick Thompson — We’re just we’re just using different language to to help people motivate and get there. But for us our vision is ah ah making followers of Jesus, so creating a movement of Jesus followers to Denver, west, and the world. And the strategy there just just to give the big blueprint is Samaria, Judea, to the ends of the earth. It’s it’s starting where we are and starting to work externally. The west has never seen a major move um, of God and so we want to be a part of that. We feel the calling in that not just for here in Colorado. And so that’s that’s like the small strategy behind why the vision is played out that way. Um, so that’s our vision. That’s our we call it our “mis-sion”…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Nick Thompson — …because it’s really a mission/vision kind of loaded in one. Um you know, moving from there to the right side of the the frame we we get into our values. Um something that I did when I came on staff was I said hey, they had like I want to say it was like 7 or 8 values and nobody could remember what 1 of them were.

Rich Birch — So true.

Nick Thompson — And I said well they’re not very valuable if we can’t even remember…

Rich Birch — Yes, absolutely.

Nick Thompson — …so let’s put those in the trash can for now, even though you may feel like that’s a wound. It’s it’s not a big enough wound because you don’t even remember what they are. And it was really easy.

Rich Birch — That’s a great way to say it. Love it.

Nick Thompson — But I said, you know when we’re defining culture, values determine the culture; they they mark the behaviors of what get us to great healthy culture. And so I said let’s not try to force this. Let’s let’s especially because at the time that would have been three and a half, four years in I said who are we? Like what do we actually value? And let’s lean out of that instead of trying to say, I want to be this. I think sometimes churches get into that hangup of…

Rich Birch — So true.

Nick Thompson — …trying to see something over here, see another church over here, and say I want to be like that. But maybe that’s not who God has made that church to be. It’s a body. It’s an organism. It’s not just an organization. It’s this fluid thing. And so we did that we just took a step back and said what are what are the things that we value? And it was really funny because it surfaced really quickly: people, prayer, and praise. Those are the three values that we lean into and you can’t have one without the other. It’s almost like a three-legged stool. They’re all equal. They’re all just as valuable.

Nick Thompson — Um, but we say prayer is the work. Ah, you know we don’t we don’t work and then pray. We pray and then God does the work. We we give him the glory, which is where praise comes in. We don’t we don’t take that. We just allow God to do what he wants to do. This is really his church. We’re just the part of the vehicle in between. And then people are the mission. You know our our church if I was to supersede and say there is a higher value, that would probably be the one. I wouldn’t dare to actually say it on paper or anything like that. But the reality is like you ask anybody at our church like why do you come here? Why are you here? You know what’s the reason you keep coming back? It’s the same answer from every single person. It’s not the preaching. It’s not the worship, no matter how good or how bad any of that is. It’s not really the operational side of Sundays. It’s the connectivity with our people. That’s something that we have that we actually don’t have a lot of as far as the the global church here in Colorado. S we choose to lean into it and make it a high value. Um does that make sense?

Rich Birch — I love that – let’s this pause there for a second. Absolutely, it makes total sense. So the couple things I want to point out. So I love the whole descriptive versus prescriptive conversation on values, right? Like I think we sometimes are looking for aspirational things things we wish were important to us. Talk us through that a little bit more; pull that apart because you you know you you talked about that there, but pull that apart a little bit more. What what kind of was your instinct around hey you know what? Let’s let’s let’s describe more who we are rather than who we want to become.

Nick Thompson — Yeah, um I think part of that too is you know we we, Pastor Keith and I, we get to spend a lot of time helping young churches or not launched churches just yet, we get to do a lot of leadership in that category which is super fun – one of our our biggest life-giving things that we get to do. And one of the things just through learning through this that we we always teach is you know don’t try to, unless God – that’s a one caveat, right? Like if God says, no this is who I want you to be; like this is who you are. And you already know that going in, holy cow man you have a huge leg up like crazy. So that’s that’s awesome. Um I don’t find that to be very normal I think most of the time people are trying to find the DNA of their church, which is really what we’re talking about is like who who is this church. What is the heartbeat? What is the lifeblood? That really accentuate to gets you to the vision.

Nick Thompson — So as far as like the description behind that the things that we were looking for again and again we had a couple years of of play time to understand it. You know three and a half to four years. So it was just a simple question like who really are we? What are the things that really rise to the service when we say this is what we care about? I think some churches—this is what is kind of unique—I think some churches have different flavors of this. Like I think people are always going to be a part of that in some way however the language gets there.

Nick Thompson — Obviously because of what we do, God is probably going to have some center point in that value system. And so those two are are really primary, I think. I don’t know how a church could operate without valuing those two things to some degree or some level. Um, and the extra is is you know I like I like the rule of threes because it keeps things off of like ah a dual net. So just having at least a third or maybe more as long as it can be remembered, as long as it could be…

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Nick Thompson — …and that’s what was super nice is that wasn’t hard for our people to grab; they’re already doing it. That’s. That’s who we are. So it’s like you don’t have to recreate the wheel. You don’t have to try to, man, we’re we’re the 7 steps of excellence like…

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nick Thompson — …but we’re not so you know we shouldn’t be focusing on that.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. So good. I also the other thing I love about this the from a communication point of view your your core values is they operate at two levels. And you and it was funny because I was thinking this as I was reading this on your site. Which which to me again friends I think this is like best in class. Um, it can always get there but man if you can push towards it, it’s amazing. That your values operate as both a single word and then a very punchy statement. So prayer, people, praise. And then prayer is the work, people are the mission, praise is the response. Um and and man if you can get if we can push ourselves to that kind of clarity, I I think that just helps us.

Rich Birch — Talk us through maybe in different environments or different ways when you’re communicating, where would you use just the single words where would you use a little bit longer and then obviously expands out from there. There’s the paragraph. There’s the full you know. There’s the sermon. There’s the series. You know like it’s you know it obviously goes you could talk about the stuff for a long time. But talk through the particular difference between when are you using just individual words as opposed to the the you know the the punchy statement the punchy few words together.

Nick Thompson — Yeah, it’s a great question. Um in everything that we do, we try to use the “kiss” method – you know, Keep It Simple Smarty. Um, we try to we try as much as we can, because you know the reality is what’s in my brain, what’s in Pastor Keith’s brain the rest of our staff is so much information…

Rich Birch — Right?

Nick Thompson — …that is not translating at the same rate. And so we do think very um, clearly we do think you know very um, even in private like how what is the best way to get this information across? And so with all of the vision frame, including the values, that’s why we use singular and the long-term expression because there’s moments where we get to teach on it. Um, you know one of the things that Pastor Keith does when he’s preaching is he’ll he’ll throw out his sermon then he’ll send it to either me or or one of our other staff members and we’ll say, hey right here’s a great place to load one of our values in. It’s it’s prime; it’s already there. You’re not, you’re not adding to scripture. You’re you’re you’re using it to accentuate what we’re trying to talk about. So here’s a great place to do that. Maybe we’re having a team meeting in the morning and we’re rallying behind one of our values. You know, if we’re saying people are the mission, you know we get to do a little bit more description with that in that moment. Um, but again we’re throwing it everywhere, especially on the – that’s where I would say would be the difference is if you’re doing a teaching moment, have longer descriptions. if you’re just like putting in the net out constantly so people just feel it, hear it, and start absorbing it, use the use the smaller words.

Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Okay, so you also said strategy. Talk us through what do you mean by that word? This is one of those words that I feel like in in a lot of or in some circles it becomes it’s like it’s like this magical thing. Ah you know but help us understand what what do you mean by strategy? How does that fit into the frame?

Nick Thompson — So yeah, yeah, strategy is is simply it’s the how. How do we get there? Um, the why is is you know the vision that’s that’s holding that. Even to some level the what is you know in our values. Um, the where and the who, I think all of those exist too, within some of the measures some of the values and and are definitely our our vision. But the strategy is always the how. So that’s what we mean by strategy. And this is actually the one area I think churches get to have a lot of fun with because this probably will not look exactly the same between any one church, unless it’s like a campus or something like that. That’s a little different story. But this is how we how we accomplish the mission. This is what we’re saying. When we do these things. This is how the vision over time gets accomplished. So that’s that’s like the simple answer to that.

Rich Birch — And and so how do you define that? What does that look like for you guys? How would you talk about the strategy?

Nick Thompson — Yeah, so our strategy is we call it The 5% Life. Again, it’s part of what we adopted from Hope Church in Las Vegas, and it’s very simple. It’s it’s 1% 1% 1% and then 2%. So that equals your 5%. We always we always throw this out there for the Christians in the room. What we’re not saying is that we want you to have a 5% relationship with Jesus.

Rich Birch — Sure, sure.

Nick Thompson — Ah non-believers never think that but it’s always the Christians that are like well I think that’s practically heresy. We’re we’re not saying that like even remotely. What we’re talking about is hey, this is a starting point and if we can get everybody to engage The 5% Life, we truly believe, and and we have analytics to prove it, ah that we are growing in that vision and going closer and closer towards that goal. So, breaking that apart, it’s really simple. We ask that people spend 1 % of their their day in God time, which is roughly 15 minutes. We ask that they spend 1% of their month in group time, which is basically our small groups. And they they spend basically one night a week for you know an hour and a half—that’s what that equates to—gather time is another one percent, which is coming to church weekly. 1% of their week is is basically an hour and a half to two hours of of time with service, and just getting to gather and be in fellowship. And then the 2% is go time, going locally and going globally we ask that. You know they would spend their year in a 2% fashion, praying and focusing on the global effect which means they go on a missions trip, or they they do something within that, it ends up being about seven days, they end up spending about seven days here locally on mission too. So it focuses them strategically towards God and towards the mission of what God’s asking this specific church plant to do.

Rich Birch — Um I love that. So I that’s I love that articulation. That’s ah, that’s a ah clear example um I think the thing I love about that is you’re focusing on you know, by by focusing on the percentages and talking about the timeline, ah, you’re giving another level of depth to this. You’re saying hey this is this is the kind of time, this is the kind of—and we we live in a time-obsessed culture…

Nick Thompson — Yes.

Rich Birch — …where time is our greatest attention is our greatest you know asset. Um, you know see you know Facebook and Instagram who are monetizing that attention. And so by saying hey, let’s let’s use that attention, you know, for our spiritual growth. I love that. I don’t know that I’ve ever heard anybody else talk about it like that. I just think that’s really great.

Nick Thompson — Yeah. Yeah, we’ve we’ve found it to be highly impactful. I mean it’s simple and yet there are so many sub-layers to that that, especially our staff gets to work with. Like you know we break that apart. We we really help people on the serving level. You know if we can get people to serve, they’re really operating in that gather time. The I would say the most important though of all is the first one. If they can spend 15 minutes daily with God um, we will see the trajectory of their spiritual growth like crazy. Because it won’t stay at 15 minutes, one; it will it will get longer. Ah, they’ll also have a relationship with God. We believe that we believe that we’ll we’ll taste and see that that’s good. And so we I don’t know that we shove it down. People’s throats. But we we talk about it an awful lot. Especially that first one just because we know that you know without that we’re we’re operating and working through, you know, fleshly mindsets and that just takes longer to get there. It it doesn’t matter how great your strategy is for your vision without God. It’s it’s just gonna be so much so much work that we just know God could go before us. So.

Rich Birch — Love it. And then I think the I think if I remember correctly the the other part of the frame is measures is what you’re you’re measuring as an organization? Talk talk me through that. What’s that look like?

Nick Thompson — Yeah, this is ah this is actually again, this is another one that I think would be pretty consistent with any church. Those first top three – the the vision the values and then the measures will be pretty consistent, some version of it with any church. And yet I find that the fourth one is the one that most churches don’t do because they either don’t have time for it or they don’t think it’s valuable. And the reality is you can’t you can’t grow into what you don’t measure. So if you’re not measuring it, you’re not even focused on on the vision is the reality and I know that might be hard for some people to hear, but it is the truth. Like if you’re not measuring as you go—Jesus did this in certain ways—I think there’s so much aptitude for that biblically even with the parable of the talents. Like if you’re not aware of what you’re doing with the things that God’s given you, growth is just ah, slow… it’s not just a slow-go. It’s ah painful. And sometimes it’s like that for other reasons, but that’s just something that we can do right from the get-go for sure.

Nick Thompson — Um, so our measures are they they operate within every bit of what we just described. They’re they’re really simple: abide, and connect, and share. That’s how we evaluate are our people, are we doing what we say we’re doing to get to where we’re going? If if we can measure those things in just a simple way abiding in Christ, meaning are people growing spiritually? Are they are they connected to the vine? And and that comes from that God time; that comes from that gather time. Ah, all all of those ingredients grow that one thing.

Nick Thompson — Are they connecting with people? You know if they’re just islands unto themselves, they’re not going to be effective in the ministry that God’s called them to. And so again, all of that touches the strategy. It messes with our values. And it and in the end it actually gets to our vision. If they’re connecting with people, we we know that they’re going to be alive in Christ and continue in healthy relationship with people and with him.

Nick Thompson — And then the sharing part, and this was this is by far—just to give everybody clarity here—this is by far a most challenging part is to get people to share into the mission. And so we believe that when we do all these things well within our staff teams within our volunteers within our groups, we believe that sharing is ah is a byproduct, sharing Christ to those around them. You know if he’s truly renewed you, if he’s truly come into your life, that’s a gift that you want to give other people. And here in Colorado we’re not, we’re not from the south. So it’s not like, hey come in my house. That’s very weird here.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Nick Thompson — Um, but that doesn’t mean we don’t share Jesus. And so we’ve had to get calculated on on how we do that.

Rich Birch — So good. Okay, so talk us through. So love that super clear explanation of the frame. Talk us through maybe how you’ve rolled this out. How does this kind of impacted how you’re making decisions at ah at the church?

Nick Thompson — Yeah, yeah, I’d I’d love to just be like super honest with you know, the good and the bad because there’s been some tension for sure.

Rich Birch — You mean it’s not been all perfect? It hasn’t been all like oh it’s amazing.

Nick Thompson — Yeah, yeah, coming you know, we’re we have taught this now, our church is like living through this we would do it again 10 times out of 10 despite the pain and the the frustrations and the tensions that have come. Um but we we started the rollout by by doing two things. We got our groups involved, because they’re they’re really the heartbeat of our church. Like if you’re in a group you’re you’re part, you’re you’re involved at a pretty high level you’re because you’re doing a buy, connect, share. Um and and we also did a Sunday morning series to really launch this. Um and I knew this was gonna happen anytime that you really hyper focus on vision and say this is what we’re doing; this is who we are. You’re gonna have people that are like, this isn’t what I want. And one of the things that I do at our church is I help people get where they need to go. I thoroughly enjoy doing that because it’s really about the kingdom at the end. If if our church is at the best church for you, you need to be in a church that’s going to be, you know, giving you what you need to be successful as a believer. And so I will I will like literally walk you to that church, however that needs to happen so that you could do that. But that’s one of the things that we saw was a tension point is people who were on the fence and were like, well I’m coming for other reasons. We just had to be honest and say, that’s okay, but that’s not who we are.

Nick Thompson — At some, and I’ve seen this, man, over over years if people are there and they’re expecting something else, and we’re like well maybe we could do that, maybe we can’t. You’re hurting them and you’re hurting yourself, I think in the process because they’re probably never going to let go. If those things are really deep in them, they might even be ministry callings or ministry giftings, but if if you as a church are saying, you know, there’s other churches that that’s what they do and they’re really good at it. Like you should definitely go be a part of their ministry. You’re growing the kingdom. Yeah…

Rich Birch — Yeah, totally.

Nick Thompson — …like it’s not about just our church sometimes, and so that’s definitely been a major tension. And at the same time, the people that are that is the vision for them too, they have gravitated and like clung to it in a way that I’ve never seen before. Like especially on our measures side. Our measures have been more successful, specifically this year than any year I’ve seen combined.

Rich Birch — That’s cool.

Nick Thompson — So it’s been major value. Major value.

Rich Birch — And that must be because it’s it’s would you say it’s because it’s gaining momentum internally. It’s like more people know about it. They know what the measures are. They know…so then it becomes you know, shared language, and then there’s a positive reinforcement on that. Is that what’s going on?

Nick Thompson — Yeah, shared language I think is key. It’s huge. It’s also simple. It’s not hard to follow. I mean I think if you’re making things hard to follow, getting to lead well is going to be difficult for you because, you know, people aren’t looking for really really hard follows. They’re looking for…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Nick Thompson — …I mean think how easy it is to follow with our our world, right now. You click a button to some level. So we’re trying to always make that more simple but also highly effective which always comes with tension.

Rich Birch — Yeah, interesting, interesting. So what what coaching would you give, maybe looking back over your roll load over these last couple years. What would you do different, knowing what you know now? How would you coach in other churches that are thinking about you know they’re thinking about the frame, they want to you know, dive deeper ah to to ultimately drive, you know, better execution, life change in people’s lives. What would you what would you coach them to think to do differently than maybe you did?

Nick Thompson — Yeah, I would ah I would say definitely get aggressive with that whole idea. Maybe you want to do something different and it’s not a frame. Maybe it’s something, but similar. Like regardless I think having those four things is is worth more than we could probably equate to. And if you if you do that again what you’re doing is you’re creating a simple pathway for people to get on board and follow, and an onramp off too. I would say that’s even more important. Because if you’re from like the bible belt or, you know, if there’s depending on where this church is that we’re speaking to right now, it’s going to look different culturally. It just is. And so knowing those things, both are so important the off off ramp for people who are like, this isn’t what I want; I want a church that is all about like level 10 worship and all the resources go to that. Okay, that may not be you though. So don’t…

Rich Birch — Right.

Nick Thompson — …pretend like it is. Like and that’s that’s a thing as a church plan I think one of the one of the hardest things is is saying, well we need to grow with people because that’s part of our vision obviously. That’s a major key driver. But grow with the people that are part of the vision is is just as as lucrative because if you’re doing it with people who are just on the there there’s a lot of frustration that comes with that. There’s a lot of pulling away from the vision and so you’re working over yourself. I’ve always said this like ah since I started in leadership is I would rather run with 5 people that are all in than 500 people that are barely got a toe in. Because you can actually do way more with those 5 people by a lot. I mean the amount of resource for a leader that has to go into trying to gather and and group people back in over and over is extreme. So find people that are really in with you and get them to replicate everything that you’re doing and saying, but you got to make it simple which is why we have the vision frame.

Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. This has been so fantastic. I’m sure there’s people that are in their cars that have pull pulled over and are writing stuff out because it’s been so much helpful ah helpful tips here. This has been been fantastic. As we come to close as we kind of come to to wrap up the conversation, any kind of final words of advice or encouragement to leaders who are listening in today?

Nick Thompson — Yeah, yeah, something that I’ve been going through recently I think it has a lot to do with what we’re talking about, but man pray. The bigger the bigger and more leadership anybody gets, I think requires more prayer for.

Rich Birch — Yeah, so true.

Nick Thompson — So like if you want your church to grow, pray more. If if your church is growing, you should already be praying more. Like spend more time with the Lord because you’re going to need his guidance and his direction.

Rich Birch — So good. Well, that’s a great great word to end on. Nick I really appreciate you being here today, and it’s great to connect a little bit. If people want to track with you or with the church where do we want to send them online?

Nick Thompson — Yeah, ah livingstone.church – that’s ah that’s our online resource and you can see all of the things that we have to offer. We’re we’re going to be offering some more resource pages here soon. A new podcast that we’re starting, some really fun stuff. So, man, it’s been a huge privilege. Thank you so much for letting me on here today.

Rich Birch — Love it. So good. So we’ll have links to all that in the show notes but really appreciate you being here today, sir. Thank you for your time.

Nick Thompson — Thank you.

Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Shawn and Sonny Hennessy, from Life Church Green Bay in Wisconsin. Shawn and Sonny are also co-hosts of The Rise After the Fall podcast and together founded The Exchange Collaborative.

The highs and lows of ministry, and the trials of life can threaten to destroy pastors and church leaders if they don’t address their own brokenness. Everyone experiences trauma and has weaknesses that can lead to a fall. But that’s not the end of the story. Listen in as Shawn and Sonny talk about how to find healing and move toward restoration after a fall.

• So many hide before they fall. // There are so many pastors in the midst of a fall or in danger of a fall who hide, either in pride or fear, and don’t reach out to someone for help. They may feel that they don’t have someone they can go to, or they may fear losing their position and livelihood, especially if they are the senior leader.
• Step away when needed. // God has used Shawn and Sonny’s own brokenness and restoration process to found The Exchange Collaborative where they come alongside other pastors and church leaders who are struggling. In addition to offering resources such as The Rise After the Fall podcast, Shawn and Sonny have put together a program for pastoral restoration. As part of this program, one of the things they offer to pastors who are at a point where they really want help is a financial incentive to walk away from their ministry for a year.
• Fake it until we make it or fall. // Some of the biggest pastoral falls come from the things people are ashamed and embarrassed about, like financial or sexual impropriety. A lot of times our insecurity causes us to hide our own doubts about ourselves, and we try to fake it until we make it. So as church leaders we actually fail the most by not admitting our weaknesses in the first place, and then not setting up safeguards to prevent our falls.
• Walk in repentance. // The first step toward healing and restoration is admitting that we are broken. The pastoral restoration program is not for the person who just wants to save face and preserve themselves. Rather it’s for those who want to walk in repentance. It helps leaders who are broken dig down to the root cause of why they took a wrong step in the first place.
• Paths for help. // Everybody’s needs are different so there are a couple of different paths in the pastoral restoration program. One option is for people to come to Green Bay for 30 days to a year and live there, going through an intense restoration process. The Exchange Collaborative offers housing, a job, a church they can attend, and the Journey to Wholeness course to work through. It is an honest and open process that will help leaders, and their families, defragment and reconnect.
• Other options for restoration. // There are other options for those who can’t come to Green Bay for a year for the restoration process. Shawn and Sonny can fly to pastors and work with them and their families while they are still serving in their ministry role. There is also an option for 2-3 day intensives at various locations. One is at the Living Waters Retreat in Arizona on June 23-25, 2022. Additionally, you can contact Shawn or Sonny directly through their website if you need to talk with them about help you may need.
• Create a culture of vulnerability. // As a church leader, you can create a culture where people on your staff will feel safe opening up about their struggles before their life goes off the rails. Have conversations about your struggles and how you are addressing them. You don’t need to bare your whole soul, but can start by speaking generally to lay down a foundation for your team. Talk time to pray for one another. The Journey to Wholeness course offered at The Exchange Collaborative website is also available for your staff to walk through together.

You can learn more about The Rise After the Fall podcast, the pastoral restoration program, and other resources at www.theexchangecollaborative.com. Find out more about Life Church Green Bay at www.lifechurchgreenbay.com.

There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!

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Rich Birch — Well hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. You know every week here on the podcast we try to bring you a church leader who will both inspire and equip you, but today we’ve got two! Two for the price of one, friends. Super excited to have a return guest. Well you know when we have return guests, that means I love what they have to say and want to expose them to you. We’re 600 episode in we have only done a handful of return guests. So super excited for that. You need to lean in today. We’ve got Shawn and Sonny Hennessy from a fantastic church – Life Church in Wisconsin. Shawn is the senior pastor. He’s international guest speaker, author, blogger. He’s a chaplain to the Green Bay Packers—are you a shareholder though? That’s the real question—and the co-founder of The Exchange. And then we’ve got Sonny – she’s a lead pastor at Life Church Green Bay and CEO of The Exchange Brand. Together they co-host a podcast called The Rise After the Fall, speaking really to church leaders ah, who have taken a step too far, who have fallen and really about this whole area of pastoral restoration. Sonny, Shawn, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.

Sonny Hennessy — Thank you.

Shawn Hennessy — Thank you, and yes I am a shareholder actually.

Rich Birch — This is… oh you are? Okay I wondered.

Shawn Hennessy — Yes, yes.

Rich Birch — That’s great. Wow. I’m not sure what that means. Like I don’t know does that mean you’re like someday you can, if they sell, you get money? Is that what that means? I don’t know.

Shawn Hennessy — There’s no no monetary impact. You can go once a year to the shareholders meeting and you can listen with 75,000 or so of your closest friends to what’s going to happen.

Rich Birch — Love it. That’s that’s so good. Sonny, why don’t we start with you kind of filling out the the picture a little bit. Kind of talk to us about Life Church – give us to kind of bring us up to speed on that to kind of tell us a little bit of the of your story. How you know how Life Church is and give us a bit of that picture.

Sonny Hennessy — Well, we’ve been at Life Church almost ten years in Green Bay, Wisconsin, of course, and we find it to be the greatest work we’ve ever done when it comes to ministry. And it came after a meteoric rise and a fall. And we almost lost our marriage – ie. we both messed up enough to to almost walk away from our marriage. And it’s after that that we saw God do the most in our life. Ah Life Church, we basically like relaunched it ten years ago with about 80 people, and a little building. And we were three times on the fastest growing churches in America Outreach list. One year as the second fastest growing, so literally it has been a ride. And then the pandemic hit, and we were able to really sit back, lean back and say, what do we want the next ten years to look like? Well we want to be pastors but we also want to help pastors who thought their life was over at the time of the fall, their fall, their step back, and realize it’s not the end. It’s never the end with God.

Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm, yeah; I love it. So I um I it seems like for about a year I had everyone who I knew in ministry said to me, hey hey have you—and I already knew where it was going—they’re like have you listened to that Mars Hill Podcast? Like have you heard about that conversation? It’s like if I feel like I couldn’t get away from it and um, you know I had friends that were on the team there, and so actually to be honest I haven’t listened to it. Because I’m like I, listen I was knew people in the midst of all that and so I was like I didn’t really want to relive it all. But I think anybody who’s listening in has a clear at least idea around you know, ah, kind of all the situation that happened there, but you’ve, Shawn, taken this kind of position with your podcast called The Rise After the Fall, which is, like you say, not a rebuttal against that but really talking about well what what happens when you know a leader falls. Talk to me about your heart behind that. What what led you to say, yeah this this is the conversation we need to be having?

Shawn Hennessy — Well, we came to the game late in the the rise after the The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill. I had heard a lot of people talk about it. And ah I was a huge Mark Driscoll fan. I loved his books, loved his messages. I actually I I really felt like I had a kindred spirit to him in so many ways in the way that I viewed leadership and ah… And then I listened to the podcast and I realized I didn’t have a kindred spirit with him.

Rich Birch — Right.

Shawn Hennessy — And there were a lot of things that I heard in that podcast that broke my heart so deeply. And we’re not only connected here in Green Bay, we’re deeply connected in Seattle, and that church for a period of time changed that city…

Rich Birch — Absolutely.

Shawn Hennessy — And then it changed it again and that was the thing that really prompted me, I think, to do a group of talks about people who are struggling with their position and ministry. And the thing that really resonated with me about that podcast was the number of opportunities that the leadership who are on that podcast, who are trying to pick up the pieces, reached out and extended an olive branch for restoration that was was denied, for whatever reason, and I think that there’s so many pastors who are either in the midst of a fall or in danger of a fall who, whether it be pride or fear, don’t reach out to somebody or respond to somebody.

Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm

Shawn Hennessy — Maybe it’s because they don’t feel like they have someone who they can go to, like if you’re a senior pastor. It’s difficult to go to your denomination because you feel like maybe you’ll lose your livelihood. Pastors aren’t very marketable outside of churches.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Shawn Hennessy — Like I mean a we could go sell shoes at Nordstrom, but what else are we have.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Shawn Hennessy — You have your degree in bible…

Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah.

Shawn Hennessy — …and so there’s not a lot of stuff that you can do. And so that’s a positive but it’s also negative in the fact that if you’re on staff at a church and you feel like you’re about to go through a fall, it’s difficult to go to your senior pastor because you wonder if you’re going to lose, again, your livelihood. And so this this program, it’s not just a podcast for us. It’s a complete restoration program and process where one of the things that we want to offer to people is actually a financial incentive to walk away for a year.

Rich Birch — Love it. Well I want to dig into that. Before we get there would you guys be open to opening up and talking about your own kind of restoration journey? I would love to hear a little bit about that. Maybe Shawn, we’ll start with you, and then, Sonny, I’d love to hear kind of—I know that’s like, tell us about that in two minutes or less – like good luck with that. But like yeah to kind of give us a bit of the framework of your own… how you come to this this whole topic of restoration.

Shawn Hennessy — Well I came to faith late. I came to faith in my early 20s. I had had a rollercoaster of a life. I came from a rough background and was playing football on a scholarship, and got arrested for robbery, got sentenced to 15 years in the state pen…

Rich Birch — Wow.

Shawn Hennessy — …served 111 days, I got off because of overcrowding, ended up at a little Christian school in North Dakota. It was an assembly of God Bible school – I didn’t know it until I got there. And one of the things that I discovered in ministry is if you have talent, many times your lack of integrity is overlooked. As long as you can perform, you don’t have to live your life up to a ah certain standard as long as you don’t make the overarching entity look bad. And I lived my life in that. I lived my life with having a lot of natural ability. I’ve never been afraid in front of a crowd. I’ve never not had anything to say. I’ve always had a magnetic personality. I’ve always drawn people even before I was a Jesus follower. And everything that Sonny and I ever did in ministry, it felt like we had the Midas touch. And then in the midst of that we we were never forced to deal, I was never forced to deal with the lack of integrity that I had in my life. And I also was never forced to deal with the excessive amount of pride that I had in my life. And so every time I would be blessed, my ego would be puffed up. And finally after you know, almost fifteen years in the ministry, it was it. And I I got to a place where my talent took me as the old adage would say that my my character couldn’t keep me. And it didn’t only affect me it affected the people in the church we were leading at the time. It affected Sonny, it affected our kids, and it was as we say in our beginning of our podcast, we had a meteoric rise and we had a devastating fall.

Rich Birch — Hmm. Sonny, I’d love to hear your kind of how you plug into that story.

Sonny Hennessy — Shawn and I both went right into ministry after being called to ministry. And I mean we were passionate and we do everything still very passionately. We go one 180% in and 180 miles per hour, and so we just got fell in love with Jesus and just did ministry. So at home the emotional baggage or how we saw our parents be married and fight and yell, and not hit each other, but fight and yell – we just did that because it was … sides the way we um, saw people that we admired spend money, we spent money, even if it meant tons of credit card debt. And so we’re being bogged down, not by we were out having affairs, you know, no by we would go to church and do it so well and that was our everything, and come home and take everything out on each other, overspend then be overstressed, ah treat each other poorly. Um and it just that never gets better. It just increases and increases and pretty soon we’d be like man today we had a good day, we didn’t fight, and then we well at ten am we did. Well that’s true, but hey most of the day we… like that’s a terrible marriage to live in. And then we took over a church that had ah a pastor who had had financial indiscretions before us, but we didn’t know that. We took on a mess and that really started to cripple us in our ministry now, plus what was happening at home. And you don’t make good decisions when you’re weary.

Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm.

Sonny Hennessy — And you you tend to find pride in things that you are successful at, and that covers the things that you’re unsuccessful in, and and makes those actually worse in the dark. And so we had gone to people before about our marriage or marriage conferences. The reality was we didn’t have a marriage issue. We had never dealt with past abuses in our childhood, ah past bullying in our childhood. Ah we were we were not emotionally healed because we had never considered true therapy for ourselves. We didn’t have a marriage problem, we had a Shawn and Sonny problem. Then we got in in a house and then we were really bad roommates. And usually you can move out from the roommate you have in college and you just are like I’m done with them. We couldn’t really do that, but we got to a point I moved out. And then we we had to submit… at that point when I moved out and it was clear I was going to file for divorce, which I left the ministry and the pressure as much as I left Shawn, in all honesty. Our marriage wasn’t that much worse, but the ministry was crippling us. And now with a pandemic, we feel that weight. Ah I left both the ministry and Shawn, and when our denomination found that out, it was clear we can’t continue this way. And we rightfully both lost our credentials. Ah and it was a turning point that we didn’t have a reputation to uphold anymore. It was devastated, and we fell all the way. And we talk about that on our podcast is that you have to fall all the way and those who truly get healed and whole are the ones that did fall all the way. So there’s pastors that – there’s a current pastor right now that there’s indiscretions coming out from ten years ago. Or um, you know, we I believe that the Bill Hybels story – it was years ago…

Rich Birch — Yeah, two decades. Yeah, it was like 20 years…

Sonny Hennessy — …Yeah we’re not talking like just deal with it when it comes out in the news today, we’re talking if you don’t fall all the way, then you do ten more years of ministry after you were sexually inappropriate with someone. That’s not okay. And and so we want to be there. Not just for those who are currently like mud on their face, but those who who need help and it’s not yet exposed.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, love it.

Sonny Hennessy — And how can we help you that we don’t expose you, but you truly fall all the way, and then we step in help.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, I love this. So I’ve um, for folks that know me, you know have been whatever two and a half I guess it’s almost three decades. And now to say three decades, that seems like a long time to be a ministry. But it’s been, you know, in that second seat you know that executive pastor seat. That’s where I’ve spent most of my time. And one of the unique kind of power dynamics that I’ve seen—and I’ve worked for incredible lead pastors I love the folks, they all happen to be guys. They’re just great guys—and but one of the things I’ve said to all of them is they don’t have peers. Like they don’t have people like even as close as I would say um I would be when I’m still with with you know these folks like they’re they’re not my peer, like they are be as the leaders of the organization. It’s a fascinating place to be. Um, ah and I feel terrible for folks particularly in that seat – I think they do carry a unique pressure. Shawn, ah help us understand this kind of scale or or common areas where you’re seeing kind of pastoral you know falls. Where we’re seeing like, hey this just isn’t working out um, where people are stepping over the line. What are the kinds of things that um, you know that people are either talking to you about, or you’ve you know you’ve engaged with um you know as you’ve you know, just as you think about this whole area?

Shawn Hennessy — Well I think there’s probably two main ones that people would naturally think about. They’d think about obviously some sort of a sexual impropriety, or some sort of a financial impropriety. And I think actually the the biggest part is the things that people are hiding. The things that they’re struggling with that maybe they’re embarrassed about, but the things that that we don’t learn, let’s say, in seminary. Like you don’t learn how to deal with you know, being a person who sits in that first seat, you’re not taught in seminary how to deal with a multimillion dollar budget. And so when you when you start to grow as a church. You’re excited about this growth. But then you’re also insecure about the fact that when you go into a meeting of let’s say board members, you’re you’re not the smartest person in the room when it comes to that. So a lot of times we’re trying to fake it until we make it and so we do that in so many different aspects of our life whether that be in relationships or whether that be in things that we’re allowing ourselves to view on our phones. There’s instant access to everything nowadays. And and so I think where where people are failing the most is in the prevention of all of these things in in admitting or identifying the areas where they are weak, right? So um, let’s say you’re you have a weakness with a member of the opposite sex. Well you have you have to have people in your life who know that.

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Shawn Hennessy — And then you have to have those people with you at all times possible. So if you’re on a Sunday and you know that you’re going to have some sort of your eyes are going to wander, well make sure that you’ve got somebody who’s with you at all times. You’re not just wandering the halls letting your eyes wander.

Rich Birch — Sure. Yeah.

Shawn Hennessy — If you have a problem with money, then you’ve got to let somebody know about that so that they can be performing these checks and balances on you. But we’re so we’re so afraid to admit that we have some sort of a deficit in any area of our life…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Shawn Hennessy — …that we don’t put the safeguards in our life. And so I think back to the question at hand, is I think the biggest area that people fall is in the admission of where they’re weak.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. So, Sonny, I want to describe a situation. You know I don’t think anybody who starts in ministry says, hey I’m going to be the person that’s going to train wreck my marriage. I’m going to train wreck the church over any of these issues. Like they nobody if we all think it’s going to be somebody else, right? We all are like I’m pretty sure that person but not me, you know, which could be part of the problem. But you know there’s this um, terrible nasty part of sin where it it—at least in my own life—it like can eke its way in. It’s like very subtle at the beginning. It’s these small steps where I like make a small compromise, and you know a little compromise little compromise, little compromise, and then eventually at some point you, step over a line. You step you go beyond a place where it’s now no longer, hey I’ve got a problem with money. I now have done something that I shouldn’t have done with money at the church. Now I maybe haven’t like it’s not like you know Jim and Tammy Fay Baker kind of like I bought 4 houses and a Lamborghini, but like I stepped over something. Um, what do I do? How how do who do I go and talk to? How do I how how do I start that conversation? Sonny, where do I where do I go when when something like that happens? Because I think that that issue I think is happening to if it hasn’t happened to ah, 100% of the leaders – it’s real close to 100% of leaders that are listening in.

Sonny Hennessy — Well there… like Shawn said, when we know that we could go to that one directly above us who writes our paycheck, or the board, or the denomination who approves that we stay as the lead pastor, that is a scary ah, scary point to get to. Just like it’s scary for people to go to marriage counseling sometimes until someone asks for a divorce. It’s like we could have done this sooner but that that’s the scariest part. So I I do believe that the reason we have a heart for The Exchange Collaborative in it being for all people, pastors who are in any denomination is because, like we had a youth pastor reach out to us from San Diego. I don’t have to go to his pastor. I’m not you know, obligated to go to his pastor. We’re not trying to hire him. We’re not trying to do something that would hurt the church, but he came to us in confidence, we helped him, he was overwhelmed. They’re not able to pay the bills. When you can’t pay the bills and you’re a pastor, this is where you’re a youth pastor and you can’t, and he said we’re having a hard time buying diapers and wet ones.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Sonny Hennessy — What’s that $20 bill that the cafe brought in this Wednesday, what’s that going to matter? I’ll put this back next week with my paycheck. And it starts there. And he didn’t say that, but that’s the risk we’re we’re taking. And I heard this recently that from a rabbi, a messianic Rabbi. Shawn and I are very much into a Messianic Jewish context of of the bible and and so we’ve been listening, and this one messianic rabbi said an unbroken leader is a dangerous leader. And that great leaders walk with the limp. Well what Shawn just talked about, the the first step is admission. If we’ll admit it and admit I’m broken I I need some help because that 20 is a big deal. Or that text to my my worship leaders, you know who’s a female, that’s a problem. That’s the first step in admitting, admitting we’re broken. Because I think all of these pastors, especially the ones who have fallen recently that were the head of many churches, wow you just so you saw them as a Billy Graham even. Like they’re going to get through the end of their life but they they obviously had never been fully broken. They were trying to carry this load and say, I am not a broken leader. But we we have to be broken. And you know the money and the sex and all of the stuff we’re talking about – it’s not really the problem. You know Shawn had a pastor’s wife that we worked for say, “Shawn, here’s some ministry advice. Keep your hand out of the offering and sleep with your own wife and you’ll be fine.”

Rich Birch — True.

Sonny Hennessy — But but that’s great advice but like why does someone not end up following through?

Rich Birch — Right.

Sonny Hennessy — It could be because at 14 you were sexually messed with, and your whole concept of sexuality has shifted, and now you want to control anything sexual, and so you find you do things that are that are wrong. There’s always a root cause and and so our hope is not just to say, hey come to us before you fall or after you fall and we’ll be ah, a listening ear and we’ll keep it confidential. We actually take people through a program that forever changed Shawn and I. I said before we didn’t have a marriage problem. We had a Shawn problem and Sonny problem that stemmed from when Shawn was in first grade and I was in I was six years old. And then the things that happened over the course of our childhood that created the problems for us in ministry that really looked like they had nothing to do with ministry.

Rich Birch — Yeah, so, Shawn, why don’t you kind of frame up the different—I know there’s ah, there’s a lot that you do to help people but—kind of give us a sense of the scale of of of what you’re doing, what you’re offering, how you interface with this um, you know beyond being a listening ear. Ah, what kind of organizationally what does that look like.

Shawn Hennessy — Yeah, and I would say that we’re really designed not… we’re really designed for somebody who’s at a point where they want help, right? Somebody who you have to ask yourself, do I want restoration, or preservation? And so we’re not in the we’re not in the preservation business primarily. We’re not for that guy who’s trying to save face. We’re for a guy who wants to walk his life in repentance. And when we had our fall, one of the things that we had to go through is we had to go through a program in Colorado with a guy named Dr Harry Schaumburg called Stone Gate Resources and I didn’t know what to expect. I thought it was just going to be a counseling program, but basically he made us read John Piper 12 hours a day so that we could remember what repentance was. And it was it was a breaking. And so we’re really a place for somebody who’s at a point where they’re not trying to save face in their ministry, they’re trying to get back to the to the root cause of why we became a follower of Jesus. This idea of I once was lost but now I’m found. And this this breaking of your heart and your spirit when when you first heard that message of the gospel. And so yes, we are listening here. We do want to be a place where people feel we are safe to come to, but it’s really too different for arms if you would, and and so one could be a route for somebody who is in danger of having a fall and we give them some steps to avoid that. We give them some sense and sort of accountability so that they can avoid some of the pitfalls that we and many of the other people that we’ve been blessed to work with have not avoided. And then it’s for the person who has fallen, and they have to walk away. And that was Sonny and I. Like I left the ministry. And when I left the ministry, Sonny left the ministry too. And I was unemployed for six months. I was I was a blogger which basically was my prideful way of saying I was unemployed.

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Shawn Hennessy — I could not find a job.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Shawn Hennessy — I wrote a blog that no one read. And so I was a stay at home dad and I made lunches and we didn’t have cable or internet or heat in our house. And Rich, it was the best thing that ever happened to me because it it stripped me down to the bare metal so that we could reforge forward without any sense or symbol of success. And so if it were somebody who’s fallen, we do have an opportunity for them to come here to Green Bay and ah and live in the city for a year, and go through an intense restoration process and it’s not easy. It’s not for the faint of heart. We’re honest and we’re open and we want guys to understand that this is ah it is a loving hand but it is an honest hand. And so we do have some we do have some businesses here that, down the road during their restoration, they could plug in and work at those, plug in and just sit in the church. It would be beautiful if for the first 30 days that they were here. They don’t do anything. And that’s the thing that requires us to fund this ministry.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Shawn Hennessy — So that people and their spouse can come here and bring their kids and not have to worry about “I’ve got to go get a job at the grocery store bagging groceries” and they’re going to have an opportunity to just sit and defragment. Some of these guys haven’t read the bible, or girls, haven’t read the bible for their own personal reflection in years because they’ve just been mining it for messages. And so you know this opportunity to sit and refresh for a period of time. Then we want to put them through the Enneagram. Let’s find out what you are? What’s your personality type. What are your what are your spiritual gifts? How many people don’t even know what their spiritual gifts are? And then put them through kind of a hybrid version of Financial Peace and a lot of these people don’t know how to deal with their money.

Rich Birch — Right.

Shawn Hennessy — They or they may not have any money. And a hybrid version because it’s a little bit difficult in our day and age to never use a card. And I get Ramsey’s heart behind that…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Shawn Hennessy — …but you know we go lots of places now you can’t use cash. I try to use cash somewhere the other day and the person looked at me like I was an alien. Like I was trying to hand them…

Rich Birch — Right, right. What planet are you from?

Shawn Hennessy — …Like like I was trying to hand them paper Covid or something…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Shawn Hennessy — …and they say, I only take cards. And then this restoration process where the basis of our process is—and and if you put it in the the secular terminology, every person at some point has had some sort of a trauma where they were fixated. My brother’s a brother’s a psychologist. He actually lives in Fort Erie, Ontario…

Rich Birch — Oh nice.

Shawn Hennessy — …and is a professor at Buffalo State, and and in the secular world they would call it fixation, where once you’ve been fixated on a certain moment in your life, you’re emotionally not able to mature more than 18 months beyond that point, meaning that when you come to another moment of trauma, and any time you come to a moment of trauma thereafter, you revert emotionally back to that particular point.

Rich Birch — Oh wow. Yeah.

Shawn Hennessy — In the spiritual world it was called we’re arrested in development, right? And so every time you come into a point of trauma you are triggered back to that moment. So back to Sonny’s point where I was in first grade when I identified my moment of fixation, or when I was arrested in development, and so for the rest of my life up until the point that I received restoration and healing, any time that I had anyone challenge me on anything, I would at best act like a third grader. And so I would yell, and I would pout, and I would hide things, and I would lie. And and if you don’t understand that somebody’s acting like a third grader then you just think, you know, what a creep. But when you understand in this context, and when Sonny and I began to understand where we were arrested at development through through the restoration process, which is not quick. I mean the program is a number of months. And then it it really what happens is once you identify that moment of trauma, it unlocks in your brain. And you know it’s like the renewing of the mind, and they’ve done brain scans where once that was identified the neurons then rush to that area of your brain and and you supernaturally begin to mature at a rapid rate. But it does take your brain 3 years to fully rewire itself, and so it is ah a continual process. But there’s so much healing that happens almost instantly. And so as Sonny and I went through that process, we were able to identify with each other I would go, oh well right now Sonny is xyz. Or she’d say, well Shawn’s right now, Shawn’s in the third grade. And it didn’t make it okay but it made it relatable.

Rich Birch — Right, right. Understandable.

Shawn Hennessy — And so that’s the biggest bulk that of the program is helping these pastors identify, yes, you have a money problem. But you know when I went through the beginning stages of my restoration process, I went through Emerge, you know, in Ohio. And the counselor that I talked to, he looked at me and at the time I was dealing with a financial issue. And and he said something that was so eye opening to me. Said you know, money’s not your issue. It’s the symptom of your issue. He said if you don’t identify the root of what your issue is, you’re going to move from money to something else. It’ll be pornography. It’ll be an affair. It’ll be food. It’ll be gambling. It’ll be something. And so for us if we can help these guys and and girls figure out what it was that that threw them off track, and they may have been six years old, and then let’s reverse engineer how to get that back. And and for me honestly, Rich, the goal isn’t to get people back in ministry.

Rich Birch — Right.

Shawn Hennessy — If they want to go back in ministry Then that’s great. But I really want people to be healthy and whole, and at the end of the day I want them to go to heaven.

Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes. Sonny, let’s talk about that restoration piece. You know with the folks that have come through your program. What is the you know trajectory? Like obviously I love the – part of what I love about you guys, I love your focus on like, yeah, yeah, all that other stuff but let’s actually talk about where you’re at your relationship with Jesus, who are you as a person – that’s the most important piece. I know there’s people that are listening in that are that are thinking like either I’ve stepped on a bomb and it’s about to blow up, or it blew up and no one knows, and they’re thinking about the future. Talk through you know what is the trajectory on people being restored. It feels like I was in a conversation earlier today with a leader who said, I feel like we used to restore people to ministry but that doesn’t happen anymore. Like it’s like we just flush them out, and then we they never end up back. So give us a sense of kind of what are you seeing with the folks that you’re working with, Sonny.

Sonny Hennessy — There are different needs because everybody’s individual, obviously, so there’s those that need to come more in residence like like Shawn talked about – come and we house them. We get them a job. We have them be in church, sitting there. We have them go through what is called Journey to Wholeness. And that would be a ten week course once a week. That’s the take it for ten weeks and you’re processing as you go, and then you probably take it again, especially if you’re with us for a year. There’s also the people that we fly to them. And we sit with them because they’re not able to leave, and come to us for thirty days or a year. We go to them. And we’ve done that where we’ve gone to a pastor, worked with a pastor while they’re staying in their church, or staying in their congregation if they’re a messianic rabbi, and and we work with them, and their children, and their family. And then we bring out the Journey to Wholeness ah co-founder to do these intensives, because she is so great and she’s the top of the Journey to Wholeness of of all the people who are helping people just in our church, she can go and take this to other cities and has.

Sonny Hennessy — Ah, then we have something that’s even more approachable, and she’s done intensives—like a 2 to 3 day weekend—either going to the people. She’s been to Dallas, Seattle, soon to be Arizona um, or people can come to us for a weekend in Green Bay. So then the third thing, and we’re actually just going to do this for the—it’s kind of the first time that we’re advertising it; we’ve done this multiple times—it’s an intensive in a location where we’re giving the dates and we’re opening it up to people. We may not know so June 23rd through the 25th in Golden Canyon, Arizona, just outside of Phoenix. We’re hosting it at Living Waters Retreat. They’re sponsoring it and donating this for us to use because they see the need for pastors. So it would be for pastors or probably, hopefully, couples who um, who will be able to register on our website. And you know at this point we think we’re going to have to close it off because it’s better when it’s smaller. So you’re actually the first time we’ve said this publicly…

Rich Birch — Oh nice.

Sonny Hennessy — …June … through 25th The Exchange Collaborative will be hosting this intensive where it’s a two day, two and a half day process. And like I said then there’s also the option that we are contacted directly through our website at theexchangecollaborative.com and then we go to pastors, to churches. I mean they could say look we need this between myself and my spouse.

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Sonny Hennessy — That’s it or it could be, can you come in and meet with me – my board knows. Or I’m like I said a youth pastor, can can you come in and talk to me, but only my senior pastor knows. And some it’s all over the headlines, and you know we hope that some of those people will even reach out.

Rich Birch — Okay, this is great. So I want to ah, there’s a lot I’d love to talk to you. I do want to come back, make sure we give out those website addresses again. So friends, if you didn’t catch them get your pen. We will come back to that. Shawn, what can we do in our churches to create the kind of environment where people are willing to raise their hand. So I’m thinking about you know I’m executive pastor listening in, I’ve got a staff team of 15 people. Yeah I’m I may be worried, I’m not worried about my lead pastor in the sense of like oh I’m worried something went wrong, but I’m like let’s assume that that that person’s got their stuff together. But I’m thinking about the other 15 people on our team. What can we do to create the kind of culture where people are willing to to open up about like, hey this this is is an area in my life that’s going off the rails. Or what should I do if I’m if I want to create the kind of place where that that could happen? Any any ideas about that, Shawn?

Shawn Hennessy — Well in our personal context, we just created a culture of vulnerability…

Rich Birch — Right

Shawn Hennessy — …where it’s okay to not be okay. And if you can’t admit that you’re not okay, you’ll never become okay – you’ll never get the help. And so of course for us, we have the luxury that it does come from the top down. But if nothing else you’ve got to gather with somebody who you know, somebody who you who you can trust, who you can be vulnerable with, who who you can trust. And so once we start to own the things that are a deficiency in our life, with with the attitude… I think there was a phase where where people wanted to be relevant. But really what that meant is they wanted to be crass. And so I don’t think that we’re looking for that…

Rich Birch — Right.

Shawn Hennessy — …to where a guy can borderline brag about the fact that he drinks beer or that he, you know cusses or you know, whatever that there was that culture there in the in the late 90s where it was like how far can you go? I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about, hey I’m struggling with anger. Have any of you struggled with anger? Oh bro. Yeah totally, I struggle I struggle with anger all time. Well, how do you deal with that? and it’s not like you have to bare your whole soul. But you can start out with just some of those general, I’m not going to get fired over them things. And lay down a foundation among your team, where like if you are the executive pastor, maybe you’re holding committee meetings and in those things, you’ll use them as prayer requests. I mean I think we still pray for each other?

Rich Birch — Yes.

Shawn Hennessy — And this idea of I mean do we really want to pray for each other? It’s like the old adage where people say, you know, how you doing? Do you really want to know?

Rich Birch — Right, right. Sure sure.

Shawn Hennessy —We’ve got a created environment where we really do want to know. And and we want to…

Sonny Hennessy — And like and if I can add, during this pandemic, Shawn and I cried in front of our staff. And I had a lot of regrets, I’d walk away and look at him and go boy I blew that and I’m not a good leader. Our staff—and we had attrition—we had some staff that I think went, wow we thought they were healthy and whole and on the rise after their last fall. And they’re they’re kind of acting like they don’t know what to do you know in the middle of a pandemic, and maybe they’re not the leaders we thought they were. They don’t have character issues now but they’re just not very strong. And I think it can like unnerve some people who’ve put you on a pedestal. But honestly, we both cried. We both wrung our fists, and didn’t know what to do. And and then we saw our staff say, I literally am just hanging on; I have so much anxiety. Five years ago none of our staff would have thought, I’m having anxiety and I need to say something about it. We also do Journey to Wholeness. It’s a Journey to Wholeness is a course we do with our staff, and if we have too many staff members that have come on since the last time, we’ll redo journey to Wholeness.

Rich Birch — Right.

Sonny Hennessy — Shawn and I have done journey to wholeness three times now, and we would do it again…

Rich Birch — Right.

Sonny Hennessy — …and we could offer that to churches journey to wholeness is now coming into corporations. And their HR departments bringing them in to work with the staff so that they quit losing staff…

Rich Birch — Right.

Sonny Hennessy — …who just can’t handle the pressure…

Rich Birch — Totally.

Sonny Hennessy — …but they have issues from childhood.

Rich Birch — Love it. This has been incredible. There’s so much we could talk about here; I feel like we’re just scratching the surface. Like gosh there’s so many other things I’d love to ah, to dive in, but I do want to respect your time. I know you guys have got a lot going on so I appreciate you being here today. Why don’t we give ladies the last word so, Sonny, what what do you want to say as we wrap up, as we kind of close off today’s episode, as we’re kind of but kind of try to tie this stuff up here?

Sonny Hennessy — Well I think trust is a big thing to say, hey I need help, but can I trust these people? For sure it would be important that you listen to a couple of our Rise After the Fall Podcasts on any of the platforms. Just so people can get an understanding of not just Shawn and I, but the path and the process we’re talking about. Ah they can go to theexchangecollaborative.com which talks both to leaders and it talks to pastors. I don’t um and at that point they can also register for the retreat in Arizona. If that gets full, our hope would be to add more. But as they will see there are both – we come to you, you come to us, how much, and what is the commitment level. And we definitely are not trying to form some structure that is immovable. It’s not a one-size-fits-all, but the the basics the what Shawn just talked about. Those are musts, right? We have to get to the root. We have to get to the fixation point. And we think that’s that’s the biggest key to all of this, really.

Rich Birch — Love it. Shawn, Sonny, I’ve really appreciated you being here today. Shawn, where do we want to send people online? Let’s give them the website addresses and stuff again where we want them to connect if they’re, you know, I’m hoping there’s people that are saying like, I man I need to reach out to these folks and have this start this conversation. Where do we want to send them?

Shawn Hennessy — Yeah, theexchangecollaborative.com. Our podcast is on, as Sonny said, on all platforms The Rise After the Fall. Our church website is lifechurchgreenbay.com. We’re actually just now starting a series called The Rise After the Fall where I’ve got 5 pastors coming in who had failures and came back from them. They had incredible success after a fall. And so theexchangecollaborative.com lifechurchgreenbay.com and then The Rise After the Fall on any of your platforms.

Rich Birch — Great. Well, we’ll definitely make sure we link to all that – it’ll be in the show notes. I want to encourage you to follow follow these guys. Good friends, people that are doing great work, you you… it’s It’s been an honor that you would come back on the podcast. Thanks so much for being here today.

Shawn Hennessy — Thank you, brother.

How you think about what you do in ministry is very important. The mindset you bring in to your ministry can be a make or break factor in your church’s ability to impact your community. Over the last few years, I’ve had the honor of talking to hundreds and hundreds of church leaders for my podcast or my latest book on church growth. Through my interaction with these leaders, I’ve started to sense that there are some common traits or mindsets among them. I see some common approaches to life and their ministries as I’ve interacted with them. Here is a collection of what I have observed and continue to pick up as I talk with these leaders. How do you resonate with these mindsets in your own leadership and ministry?

“Teach us to realize the brevity of life, so that we may grow in wisdom.” – Psalm 90:12 (NLT)

One of the most striking similarities of church leaders who are leading thriving ministries is that they realize the fact that they have a limited amount of time to do what God has called them to do; in fact, they take this point very seriously. There is an urgency in their actions that ripples through everything they do. This drive is more intense than just an “entrepreneurial drive”; it is deeply rooted in a sense of the frailty of the human condition and their own limitations as leaders.

5 Signs That a Church Leader Knows Time is Short

Leading churches are a curious mix of attracting people to their services while simultaneously sending people into the community to make a tangible difference, all while working hard to get people deeply plugged into community within the church. This tension of being both a deep and wide church is common among churches which are making a difference today. Church leaders from growing churches see themselves trying to balance out these tensions in perfect harmony. Here are some common elements of these aspects of ministry that we come across in many churches today:

Common Come & See Elements

Common Go & Serve Elements

Common Stick & Stay Elements

“Let’s try it and see what happens.” Church leaders in growing churches see much of what they do as a learning process rather than opting for a settled “best practice”. They are constantly making small course corrections on much of what their church does. They firmly hold the message of the church but are flexible enough to leave an open hand on how the church accomplishes its mission. They are more like scientists testing out new theories all the time than a baker executing the perfect recipe.

5 Areas to Experiment at Your Church (and not lose your job!)

We all would like to try out some new things at our church. Yet, we’re looking for “safe places” to take some risks before rolling them out for the rest of the church.

“You have heard me teach things that have been confirmed by many reliable witnesses. Now teach these truths to other trustworthy people who will be able to pass them on to others.” – 2 Timothy 2:2 (NLT)

Prevailing churches are constantly raising new leaders at all organizational levels. They are constantly seeking ways to pass along leadership training through intentional mentoring, equipping and training. They don’t see it as a “nice to have” part of what the church does but as core to what the church is. In fact, when you look at where church leaders from growing churches spend their time, it’s on leadership development tasks. Take a closer look at 2 Timothy 2:2 above and try to pick out how many “generations” of people the message was passed onto? From the beginning of the church, creating new leaders has been a core function!

4 Ways to Integrate Leadership Development into Every Weekend at Your Church

When you get around leaders from growing churches, you’ll notice that they have a deep sense of faith at the core of what they do. In fact, leaders of prevailing ministries know that their own faith, growth and development need to come before they even attempt to lead publicly. They invest time, effort and energy into ensuring that their faith is unshakable, vibrant and growing. The old adage that you can’t take someone somewhere that you haven’t been has never been truer about leadership in the church today. These individuals are looking for ways to consistently apply the teaching of Jesus more deeply to their lives.

5 Quotes to Encourage You in Your Personal Development as a Church Leader

As a church starts to grow, the leadership needs to shift its attention from “doing the weekend right” to building and perfecting systems in order to accomplish that outcome. In a very real way, these leaders make the transition from trying to build ideal Sunday services to building amazing organizations that will host services for years to come. This transition can be hard for leaders because they get into ministry to minister to people directly and hence, can find the skills of organization building to be a stretch. This shift is at the very core of what allows a church to scale up and go. If the leadership can’t make this transition, the church will ultimately plateau and spiral into decline.

If you look at the marketplace, you can see all kinds of examples of people who were “obsessed” with building great products or services. However, over time, they shifted to building great organizations with a lasting legacy. Arguably, the story of Steve Jobs is one wherein his first iteration of leading Apple was all about building the perfect computer. But his second stint as the CEO was all about building an amazing organization. Ultimately, that organization went on to scale new heights than he was able to achieve in his own lifetime. We’re seeing the same thing happening with Amazon as well. Earlier on, Jeff Bezos was all about being customer driven, but he has most definitely shifted to building a world-class customer-driven company. The task of leading an organization that attempts to scale and grow is about gearing up for the task of building an amazing organization rather than myopically focusing on the actual deliverables we’re delivering. How are you working “on” the church rather than just “in” it?

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Thank you so much for joining us for this episode of the unSeminary podcast. I’m excited be speaking with Mark Hearn, pastor of First Baptist Duluth in Georgia.

First Baptist Duluth really is a multi-cultural church. Currently it is composed of 42 different nationalities. There is music in different languages and people from all over the world worshipping together under one roof. When Mark first arrived at First Baptist in 2010, however, the church was the typical Anglo-Saxon monolithic church and not representative of the Duluth area. Duluth has quickly changed into a diverse and multi-cultural city, about 40 years ahead of the national average. First Baptist wanted their church to reflect the community where they were located, so they took on the task of changing the church’s culture in order to embrace a diverse congregation that reflected the diversity of the city. Mark is with us today to share what this process has looked like.

You can learn about First Baptist Duluth at their website www.duluthbaptist.org. Mark also shares more about First Baptists’s journey to becoming a multi-cultural church in his book Technicolor: Inspiring Your Church to Embrace Multicultural Ministry.

There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!

Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live! 

Helpful Tech Tools // Mosaix Global Network

Influential Book // The 3D Gospel: Ministry in Guilt, Shame, and Fear Cultures by Jason Georges

Inspiring Leader // Dr. Billy Graham

What does he do for fun // Read, Run

Contact // Website: www.duluthbaptist.org

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us this week for another unSeminary podcast. I’m excited to have Scott Kramer with us today. Scott is the executive pastor at GT Church, which has two locations in Pennsylvania.

GT Church is a 91 year old church with a very contemporary feel. They aim to make their message relevant to real life issues. The church went through a traumatic time two years ago when their lead pastor, Bryan, and his wife were hit head on in a collision with a drunk driver while riding their motorcycle. Bryan’s wife died instantly and Bryan was pinned under the vehicle for several hours. There were many uncertainties during this time, including whether Bryan would survive this terrible accident. But after several blood transfusions and the loss of his left leg, Bryan was released from the hospital. He stayed out of the leadership for a while until he was ready to step back into his role. Scott talks with us today about what a church might go through during a crisis like this, and how to keep the church moving forward with its mission without turmoil and confusion.

You can learn more about GT Church at their website http://www.gtaog.org/

There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!

Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live! 

Helpful Tech Tools // Podcast Preaching

Influential Book // Sticky Teams by Larry Osborne, Unreasonable Churches by Rich Birch

Inspiring Leader // Ron Carpenter

What does he do for fun // Spending time with family, Golfing

Contact // Website: gtaog.org

Thanks for joining us for another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today I’m excited to have with us our guest, Bruce Ammons from Sugar Creek Baptist Church.

Sugar Creek is one of the fastest growing churches in the country. Serving the greater Houston area, the church is very ethnically diverse, with people among the congregation from over ninety different countries, speaking seventy different languages.

The mission of getting first time guests to return to a church again became Bruce’s burden after he learned that only 1 in 10 first time guests will return to a church a second time. However if an unchurched person returns time and time again, Bruce notes that a lot of these people (even adults) will trust Christ as their Lord and Savior. So at Sugar Creek, Bruce and his team have worked hard to retain first time guests, and now about 50% of their first time guests do return. Of those who return, about 76% stay and continue attending at church. Bruce talks with us today about how to retain visitors to your church.

Bruce works to help other churches retain visitors through a coaching session that he offers. You can learn more about this service by emailing him at [email protected]. You can also learn more about Sugar Creek at www.sugarcreek.net.

There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!

Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live! 

Helpful Tech Tools // Workflowy

Ministries Following // Church of the Highlands

Influential Book // Walking on Water When You Feel Like You’re Drowning: Finding Hope in Life’s Darkest Moments by Tommy Nelson and Steve Leavitt

Inspiring Leader // Rick Warren

What does he do for fun // Golfing, reading and zip-lining with his family

Contact // Church website sugarcreek.net or email Bruce at [email protected]

Art Rainer is the Vice President for Institutional Advancement at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (SEBTS), and previously the Administrative Pastor at Family Church in Florida. In his current role at SEBTS he does work with financial development, marketing and communications, and enrollment, just to name a few. He has a passion for personal finances which began many years ago—in fact Art shares that his initial goal coming out of college was to be a certified financial planner. He’s written a number of super-practical books and his latest, The Money Challenge is no different.

Listen in as Art shares with us his passion for seeing people become financially healthy while living a lifestyle of generosity, and the action steps found in his new book.

There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!

Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live! 

Helpful Tech Tools // Mint.com, Clear app

Ministries Following // Family Church

Influential Book // The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown; The Elements of Investing by Burton G. Malkiel and Charles D. Ellis

Inspiring Leader // Elon Musk

What does he do for fun // Family time with kids and wife

Contact // @artrainer on Twitter, Seminary website: www.sebts.edu

Stephen Brewster serves as a part of the leadership team at Freedom House Church in Charlotte, NC. In his role, he leads the Creative team in dreaming, creating and executing experiences, communications, music and more for all areas of ministry at the church. Stephen has nearly 20 years in professional creative environments including music marketing and management, artist development, creative team leading and art directing. He and his wife, Jackie, have four children.

On today’s podcast, we have a helpful conversation about how you can lead the creative types within your church. Listen in for help lead the team of people who push the creative elements of your ministry forward!

There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!

Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live! 

Andy Steiger is the founder and director of Apologetics Canada, an organization dedicated to helping churches across Canada better understand and engage today’s culture. He created and hosted the Thinking Series and is the Author of Thinking? Answering Life’s Five Biggest Questions. He has spoken on life’s big questions internationally in universities, conferences, churches, prisons and coffee shops. He is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. Andy lives in Abbotsford, BC, Canada with his wife, Nancy, and their two boys.

In today’s episode, we talk about the place that apologetics could play in your church! Listen in for some practical help and insights as your church attempts to impact a post-Christian context.

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