Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Aaron Stanski, founder and CEO of Risepointe, a firm that partners with churches across the country to design and build facilities that amplify ministry impact. With more than 15 years of experience in church architecture, project management, and ministry leadership, Aaron and his team help churches navigate complex building challenges while staying focused on mission.

Is your church facing growing pains—crowded lobbies, full parking lots, or overwhelmed kids’ spaces—but unsure how to move forward? Aaron shares practical insights on how to approach facility planning strategically, align vision with budget, and avoid the costly mistakes that can slow down momentum.

To learn more about Risepointe’s work helping churches align facilities with mission, visit risepointe.com/unseminary or follow Risepointe on Instagram for inspiration and project stories.

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Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Portable Church

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Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. I am so glad that you have decided to tune in. You know, across the country, we keep hearing about churches that are growing and we’re seeing swelling attendance and that’s good. Some of that is like a platinum problem though. It generates other issues that we have to think about. And so what what I did was pull on a friend of mine, Aaron Stanski, he’s the founder and CEO of Risepointe. He’s got 15 plus years of church design, leadership and project management and experience.

Rich Birch — If you don’t know Risepointe, where have you been? You’re living under a rock. They’re church architects and designers. They have years of experience working with churches like yours, schools and nonprofits, and they offer a wide range wide variety of services, including architecture, interior design, graphic design, branding, and so much more. Aaron is, I like Aaron not just because he actually has got incredible skills. His team’s got incredible skills, but he really actually wants to help churches like you. And so Aaron, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.

Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I’m glad to be here, Rich.

Rich Birch — It’s going to be good. Give give people, you’ve been on a couple of times…

Aaron Stanski — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …and but give us again, for folks that haven’t heard, the Aaron Stanski, you know, a couple bullet points.

Aaron Stanski — Sure.

Rich Birch — What did I miss? What do you want to fill in the picture?

Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, ah you know the quick story is grew up in ministry. My dad was a pastor growing up, planted a we planted a church in Boston when I was a kid. Went to school for engineering, worked for Harley Davidson Motorcycles, did big projects, project management and stuff for them for a while. And then felt called to ministry.

Aaron Stanski — So left Harley Davidson, was on staff with Cru for a couple years doing college ministry before I jumped on staff at a fast growing multi-site church here in Chicago. So loved that, loved being part of that ministry team. And then, of course, we went through a big building project. So got to roll up my sleeves on the on the church staff side of things and hire architects and engineers and AV consultants and really kind of combine my my engineering mind and my ministry heart. And so absolutely love that process. And so, yeah, I’ve been helping churches now for the last 15, 16 years. It’s been an absolute blast.

Rich Birch — So good. Well, the the kind of person I want to have in mind today, and so friends, if if you’re listening in, if this sounds a little bit like you, you’re going to want to pay close attention. So I’m thinking about that church, you know, the leader that looks around, they maybe have got, maybe they got two services.

Rich Birch — They’re looking around and they’re seeing, ooh, they feel like maybe their growth ah is starting to create some pinch points. Maybe it’s in kids. Maybe it’s in adults. Maybe it’s their lobby. It’s they look around and they’re like, man, I just I feel like our facility might be holding us back a little bit. um And because I do bump into this in churches all the time.

Aaron Stanski — Sure.

Rich Birch — And there’s like, there can be like a certain amount of anxiety and fear around, gosh, when do I, what do I do? So when you talk to pastors, what do you know notice as one of the kind of most common point of confusion when it comes to starting or pulling the trigger, moving on with a building project, expansion project, try to improve things. Where are we getting this wrong?

Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, I think ah like one, the whole process itself can just be completely overwhelming.

Rich Birch — Right.

Aaron Stanski — Like immediately you’re confronted with, ah oh my goodness, like what’s the right solution? What is the, ah what is the town or the, you know, the jurisdiction going to allow us to do? What is this all going to cost? Where are we going to do church in the meantime if we’re having to fix this building or add on to it?

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Aaron Stanski — I mean, immediately all of these questions start to kind of well up and it can become ah really overwhelming for a lot of churches.

Rich Birch — So good. So when when we step back, is there any one of those that you think in particular is like a piece of the puzzle that is the most kind of mysterious or is the most um confusing as as you that you bump into regularly with leaders?

Aaron Stanski — I mean, I think the most confusing is probably like, what’s the right solution?

Rich Birch — Okay. Yep.

Aaron Stanski — A lot of times it’s a combination of like, you know, we feel like we’re out of space, so we have to add on. But if we do that, we’re going to have to modify what we already have. And what we have is old, or there’s some maintenance on it that we haven’t gotten around to. And like, what can we do in this space? And so actually the the right solution is is probably one of the most difficult things to kind of imagine for a lot of pastors.

Rich Birch — Right.

Aaron Stanski —  And, you know, then right behind that is like. What’s it going to cost? Right.

Rich Birch — Right.

Aaron Stanski — I mean, you know, for the last four or five years, we’ve seen a lot of inflation. We’ve seen a lot of different things happening, like with pricing and stuff. And so what used to be a pretty easy calculation for us as churches now, it feels like it’s a lot foggier as far as like what what things are just going to cost.

Rich Birch — Yeah. So I’ve heard church leaders at this this juncture, they start thinking like, okay, like we got to get an architect. Get me the architect, the the person that designed this building 25 years ago. Where are they? Are they still in business? And, you know, we start going down that road. I’m not even really sure what an architect does. Like, I obviously, you you draw things. But, like, help us understand what what is the piece of the puzzle that, like, an architect brings to the table.

Aaron Stanski — Right.

Rich Birch — And I know that’s, like, a subset of what you guys do. Pretend that I’m, like, super dumb because it’s probably not actually worry about pretending too much there. Explain what that is. What is that service? And is that actually what we need at this juncture? Is that the first question? Like, get the architect. Come in here. Explain that whole thing.

Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, well, I think we have to be careful. Sometimes hiring an architect is like picking up a hammer, right? And for a lot of architects who were, you know, traditionally trained and might have like one sort of, you know, viewpoint of the world. Like their job is to come in and draw something new um that’s going to sort of solve your problem. The challenge with that is a lot of times that architect is just looking for ah one type of solution, ah which is build you something new, add something on.

Rich Birch — Right.

Aaron Stanski — And they’re looking at it very narrowly through the lens of what the solution is going to be.

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.

Aaron Stanski — And a lot of times they’re not, you know, kind of able to kind of step back and take a look at strategically and say, okay, before we start drawing plans and blueprints and some of those sorts of things, let’s really talk about like what’s going really well at your church and how are we going to amplify what you’re already doing well? How are we going to add some, you know, some pieces around it? And then of course, how are we going to fix some of the big, you know, some of the bigger problems?

Aaron Stanski — So an architect technically, right? I mean, it’s a licensed professional. Their job is to lead your organization through the process from the very beginning all the way through the stages of design. Their job is to make sure that the solution is aligned with your with who you are as an organization and your budget. And they’re supposed to help all the way through construction, making sure that it gets built the way that it was designed and and that it gets you know all the questions get answered and that it’s ultimately safe.

Aaron Stanski — So that’s what an architect does. I think the I think the thing that we miss a little bit on the front end is in order for the architect to start, we really need kind of need to know what the scope of the work is and the budget first.

Rich Birch — So good. Okay. Okay. Good.

Aaron Stanski — If we don’t put those two guardrails on the left and the right-hand side, we’re really missing out. The left-hand side should be scope. The right-hand side should be budget. And we should nail those down before we get going into designing.

Rich Birch — Okay. I want to unpack that because I know, I actually texted you recently. Friends, getting you behind the scenes a little bit. I had a friend of mine, they had done exactly what we talked about here. They were like, we went and hired an architect to help with this thing. And they came back with a ginormous number um that was like, I would say a factor, you know, three or four times what I thought. And what do I know? I don’t know anything.

Rich Birch — And I actually think it was these guardrails where they went off off on it. They didn’t start with scope and budget. They started with, hey, here’s a problem, architect – solve it for us. And they came back with this, you know, very incredible initial drawing and all that.

Rich Birch — Talk us through how do we nail down scope and budget from the beginning? Talk us through what does that look like?

Aaron Stanski — Yeah, so I would say, ah you know, you want to find a ministry partner who’s going to come in and really kind of help ah flesh out some of those pieces, really understand what’s working well, what’s not working well, what’s missing, where do we have to clarify what it is that we’re doing in order so to sort of establish that. And and there’s ah there’s a lot of great partners out there who can help you do that. But you’re really looking for someone in the building/design/construction space who has experience who has a lot of experience, honestly, with churches and understands what it means to, you know, serve people who’ve been part of your church for 20, 30 years and keep them on mission and disciple them up, as well as welcoming people who are walking into your doors for the very first time.

Aaron Stanski — So at Risepointe, we walk through a process called The Needs Analysis, where we get on site with, you know, a church for an entire day and understand their DNA and really understand what’s working and not working and stuff. And we start with that so that we can sketch out some ideas and some concepts and stuff around what is the what is the scope of work that’s going to solve the problem or fix the lid or add the seats that we need? And what’s the budget that we feel like God’s calling us to spend as a church in order to go do that? And we want to start with that before we jump into full architecture.

Rich Birch — Okay, so sidebar question. Is it possible for someone to help us at this early kind of scoping phase without doing some sort of on-site? Like, can I just call an architect and say, hey, here’s the problem. I need to add a thousand seats. How much is that going to cost? And then they go away and come back with a number. Or, or you know, are is there, yeah, can they do that? Talk us through that.

Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, you can. I mean, you can call up Risepointe and I’ll get on the phone with you. The, and, but there’s going to be a range, right?

Rich Birch — Okay.

Aaron Stanski — And I can say like, Hey, here’s the last 10 churches that we’ve done a thousand seat auditoriums at…

Rich Birch — Right.

Aaron Stanski — …and here’s kind of the range and stuff. The problem with shortcutting to that is you miss a lot of things, right? Each jurisdiction is different, like how the civil engineering works, the parking requirements and stuff.

Rich Birch — Right. Good. Yep.

Aaron Stanski — And those really affect the budget. And so we want to understand those first. And the second thing is, I mean, every church that we work with is and incredibly unique in the people that they’re reaching, and the values that those people have and whether they’re de-churched or unchurched and and who they’re running into and and stuff. And so really kind of understanding that context is so important um before we jump into, you know, sort of solution.

Aaron Stanski — But yeah, I mean, since we work with churches all over the country, I mean, if someone called me up, I could probably, I could probably put my thumb in the air and give them a ah swag on what that might cost.

Rich Birch — Yeah. And I would, you know, it’s funny because I’ve, I’ve recommended people have asked me those kinds of questions and I always actually say exactly what, you know, where you led, which is like, you should call my friend Aaron and, but, but what you should do, get on the, do the like free call or whatever, get on the book a time. But I said, you really should do this Needs Analysis thing. Cause the project that you’re facing is always much larger than you think.

Rich Birch — And I would rather people take time, invest the resources upfront and time, frankly, to slow down and say let’s actually understand the question we’re asking before we jump to answers, right? Like what because because we could get this thing wrong and actually that gets to this whole idea of how early is too early. My experience has been people wait too long before they engage with someone like you. They they get into like their third service, fourth service. They’re like, oh gosh, people aren’t going to the fifth service. Maybe we have to figure out how to get more space. Talk us about, you know, what mistakes do we make when we wait too long without engaging with someone like you?

Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, I’d say, you know, the thing to keep in mind is that you’re, if you’re the average church that reaches out to Risepointe, you’re somewhere between two and a half and three years away from having any sort of new space.

Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. Okay.

Aaron Stanski — And that’s on the short end. We have churches who are bringing new space online five years after they’ve reached out to us because they’re, they live in downtown areas…

Rich Birch — Wow.

Aaron Stanski — …very challenging jurisdictions and some things like that.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Aaron Stanski — And so when we’re thinking about when is the right time, I think, yeah, earlier is definitely better. But we have to be careful ah that we’re strategically spending dollars even on the front end, you know, so that we, you know, we’re getting out of it what we need.

Aaron Stanski — As leaders, what questions are we asking that we need answers for in order to determine is it the right time to move forward with a building project? Is it a right time to launch a campus or go multi-site or some things like that?

Aaron Stanski — If you wait too long, typically what happens is either we’re we’re rushing through the design process to kind of hit the capital campaign stuff and there’s budget misalignment. All of a sudden we thought it might be this, but now this is the actual budget for what it’s going to work.

Aaron Stanski — And I think when that happens, there starts to be some vision confusion. You know, we’re looking at solutions that we kind of rushed through and it doesn’t feel like we really thought all of those things through. And so I think that’s another one.

Aaron Stanski — And then I just think, you know, there’s there’s some missed ministry opportunities if if we kind of wait too long. I think a lot of times when we’re planning out, here’s the multiple phases of how we develop this campus and expand it. You know, we miss out on opportunities to go get some smaller things done sooner…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Aaron Stanski — …capture momentum, you you know, fix the welcome center, like invest some dollars in something we know we’re not going to tear down, make it better for guests in a couple months. And we miss out on those things if we don’t have a bigger, more strategic plan.

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Yeah, kind of a step back and say, hey, how does this fit into where everything that’s going on?

Rich Birch — What would be kind of double clicking on that? What would be some indicators internally that would say, hey, um you know, these things are happening. I should really reach out to Risepointe. What would be some of the things that you would see as telltale signs that it’s now a time to to kind of take this step?

Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, I think if we’re, you know, if we’re really pushing towards our, those max numbers at our primary service, I think that’s a, that’s definitely an early indicator.

Aaron Stanski — A lot of churches just kind of reach out and say, Hey, okay, here’s, here’s kind of where we’re at. Here’s where the math is at. Like, can you look at this like from a, like how much kids area should we have? How much lobby space should we have? And we can run some quick math for them and say, Hey, you don’t have any other lids. You’re looking good. You, you probably have a few more years of growth in you.

Aaron Stanski — So that would be one. You know i think if ah you know we’re starting to talk about ah adding a third or fourth service, it’s probably a little bit too late, but we should probably get on it sooner than later.

Aaron Stanski — And then, you know, one of the, one of the other things too, is just kind of paying attention. It’s easy for us on Sundays to stand on the stage and look out and get a pretty good sense of, are there enough seats? Is there space for me here? And like, we look out and we see some empty chairs.

Aaron Stanski — Keep in mind that when you’re coming in from the back of the auditorium, it’s a lot harder to see some of those empty chairs.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Aaron Stanski — And so what is the percentage? But the other thing is the things that we’re not seeing when more when we’re on stage on Sunday is we’re not seeing the parking lot. We’re not seeing the early childhood wing that’s basically a it’s a it’s a disaster back there. There’s kids running around like crazy.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.

Aaron Stanski — And so even if we’re ah even if we have enough seats, like or we’re not at the 80 or 90 percent capacity to our primary service. We need to be looking out at some of these other areas and making sure that there’s not a lid somewhere else.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Yeah. In fact, I literally just last weekend said that to a church. I was, you know, I was doing a weekend visit where I was on site and all that stuff. And, and it, to me, it felt like the building, the parking, and the kids, and the main auditorium, they, or the adult auditorium, they just didn’t match. It was like they, the three were out of alignment. And I think they had enough kids, but you know, I don’t know. There was, it’s interesting how that can happen. And you know the lead pastor typically is seeing um only the adult room and not you know not anything else.

Rich Birch — Early on, you know there’s my experience has been and projects that have been a part of that I would rather spend money as personally as a leader. I’m not saying, friends, if you’re listening in, that you need to necessarily do this.

Rich Birch — I would rather spend money on the front end with a designer like you. Because because the joke I’ve made is it’s a lot cheaper to move walls on drawings than it is in in the real world. And I’ve that comes from pain of building stuff…

Aaron Stanski — It’s true. Yeah.

Rich Birch — …of building stuff, and then being literally I opened up a new facility and then stood there with a kids ministry person. And the kids ministry person was like, oh, I didn’t think it was going to look like this. I was like, oh my goodness, what what are you talking about?

Aaron Stanski — Shoot.

Rich Birch — Like, we just opened this new facility. Talk us through, like, what’s an investment on the front end to reach out to someone like you?

Aaron Stanski — Sure.

Rich Birch — How do you help churches see that hiring someone like you can actually save us resources in the long haul? Talk us through that.

Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, starting out at the beginning and getting really clear about where we’re going and how we’re going to get there, it really helps us, you know, cart and like make sure we don’t overbuild or underbuild.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Aaron Stanski — It makes sure that like compared to all the other churches that we’re working with all over the country, that we’re in alignment with where the square footage is at and it’s aligned with how you do ministry locally, how you use these spaces seven days a week.

Aaron Stanski — And so it’s it’s really making sure that we’re not overbuilding or underbuilding anywhere because that’s ah you know that’s a huge that’s a huge miss if we do that. And that’s probably one of the biggest cost savings.

Aaron Stanski — The other thing is you know during you know during sort of that season of vision and master planning and when we’re talking to our folks about what God’s doing at the church and we’re telling stories of life change, like we’re really kind of laying out a vision for what God is calling us to do as a ministry. And people just naturally have questions around like, like, how is this going to help? And and how is this actually going to help us reach my lost coworker, my lost neighbor?

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Aaron Stanski — And, and so I think, you know, spending the time to do that, really translating sort of the mission and vision into physical space needs and producing some of those renderings that accompany that story. I mean, that’s just a really critical part.

Rich Birch — Okay, so let’s double click on that. That’s that I feel like I have been caught in this situation where I get I get like, it’s the hammer and nail thing you you say. Like, I’m I’m pretty sure I know what the solution is.

Aaron Stanski — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Like, let’s go do this. And I like that what you’re saying is like, hey, we need to take a step back and like actually think through how does this fit in our vision and how’s that all? How do you actually do that? How do you help a leadership team discern what the problem is that they’re really needing to solve, or should be solving, rather than just let’s build a bigger box. Or, I know! We just need 25 new parking spots. Like how do we not jump too quickly to that? What’s that look like?

Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, it looks like, you know, spending time.

Rich Birch — Good.

And and, really getting to know them and what makes them unique. Like we have a fantastic set of tools that we use at Risepointe to like really talk about, you know, let’s talk about, uh, outside the walls, right? Like who, who are we called to reach? And, and what does it mean to do ministry in this place that God has uniquely put your church in the geographic area?

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Aaron Stanski — And let’s talk about the tension between this side of town and that side of town. And let’s, you know, let’s wrestle with, you know, some of those issues. And then let’s, and then let’s talk about like, like, man, who are we as a church on our best day? And what does it feel like when we’re like living up to our full potential?

Aaron Stanski — And then we even get into some of the things around like, man, what are what are some of the strategic drivers? What’s driving more people hearing about Jesus? What’s working really well? What do you see as opportunities or things that where if you had the right leader or finances that you’d be able to you know, accomplish even more of your mission.

Aaron Stanski — And so by starting there and then starting to work down towards, okay, where is your facility aligned with that with that exercise and where is it misaligned? Okay, let’s unpack that a little bit. And then without getting into ah the solution yet, I want to meet like individually with each you know ministry leader…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Aaron Stanski — …talk about what how check-in works and all of those things.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Aaron Stanski — And so it’s really sort of this almost like a 360 review of what’s happening between the mission and vision God’s given us, and how are our facilities helping or hindering that mission and vision.

Aaron Stanski — And then it just comes down to budget. And so, okay, here are the possible solutions. Here’s what roughly what some of those things are going to cost. And then it’s going to the, going to God in prayer and saying, okay, what are you calling us to do? What are based on these options and trying to figure it out?

Rich Birch — I want I want to come back to the budget question in a second. But I’ve I think I probably have stole this off you. I have said to multiple church leaders that like our buildings were built, there was like a philosophical underpinning of the the buildings that we were built with. There was a ministry model that they were built on.

Aaron Stanski — Sure. Yeah.

Rich Birch — And then there’s been a lag between when we made those decisions, we’ve we built them. Now we’ve been using them for X number of years. And our ministry model may no longer be the same as the building, or probably isn’t actually the same as when the building was built.

Rich Birch — What’s your sense on how long that lag time is kind of between the, they they you know, we built something. If we built something more than 10 years ago, you know we probably want to readdress or look at our facilities afresh and say does this actually meet the needs of…

Aaron Stanski — Sure.

Rich Birch — Because I feel like so many of us are in like the the cramped shoes that just don’t quite fit they work but they don’t quite fitWhat do you think that lag time is?

Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, the lag time is getting shorter and shorter.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Aaron Stanski — It used to be, you know, it probably used to be 40 or 50 years…

Rich Birch — Right.

Aaron Stanski — …you know, without major ministry model shifts and stuff. Obviously, you know, Willow Creek, North Point, you know, coming onto of the scene in the in the late 90s and stuff really shifted. We have churches all the way up into the 2000s, even into the 2010s that sort of copied the model of the Willow Creeks and some of those things. And I think we’re seeing, you know, we’re seeing the model shifting a lot faster now.

Rich Birch — Interesting.

Aaron Stanski — I’d say, you know, you know, we’re probably in a faster 10 to 20 year cycle, something like that. But I think we’re coming out of the, you know, the, you know, that model of Willow Creek and North Point and stuff. And we’re, we’re moving into a new season. And it’s kind of exciting for us.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Aaron Stanski — I mean, we get to, we get to sit on the front edge of all of that. Churches like in fantastic places, being creative, reaching, you know, people for Christ. And so it’s just interesting to kind of observe some of those things and, um and observe what’s working really well and, and where it we can improve, you know?

Rich Birch — Yeah. You’re baiting me. What are those things that you’ve seen that have shifted? There’s got to be, or is that the magic? We got to call Aaron to find out.

Aaron Stanski — No, you don’t have to call Aaron. No, I mean, the thing, I mean, like, you know, I heard someone share this with me recently, right? I mean, every Netflix account homepage is different for every person, all billion subscribers or whatever that they have.

Rich Birch — Right.

Aaron Stanski — They’re individually tailored to to those individuals. And I know that because when I had a bunch of seventh grade boys spend the night at my house, like my algorithm got so messed up on my Netflix account last weekend.

Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.

Aaron Stanski — But I think there is a shift away from you know some of the bigger, more institutional types of look and feel and trying to get down to, okay, how are we engaging one-on-one with people who are walking in and where they’re at.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Aaron Stanski — How do we, you know, instead of preach a sermon at them, how do we hear their story? And what does it look like for us to hear their story in in various places, whether that’s a welcome center, whether that’s, ah you know, side by side in the pew, whether that’s in sort of a first steps class. And so there’s a shift on that side of things…

Rich Birch — Yep. Yeah, that’s interesting.

Aaron Stanski — …just like as we look at the next generation and how we engage and reach the next generation.

Rich Birch — Okay, I want to loop back on the money question. So for folks that don’t know, a part of what I do is actually help churches with that. And don’t really talk about it publicly, but I do. And, you know, there is this interesting tension that churches often come to this. It’s like we think we’re different than our ourselves.

Rich Birch — And that if I was going to go build a new house, I would have to start with, well, how much income do I have? And like, what can the, you know, what can the, you know, what what would the what would the bank give me from a mortgage point of view? Like I start with reality around my finances. But so many churches start with, let’s build this giant thing. And it’s totally disconnected from the from what we could actually afford to either raise or carry long-term.

Rich Birch — How much variance can a church bring to a design? Like if they upfront are defining, Hey, like we can afford probably 5 million. I know I’ve got $35 million dollars in dreams or maybe not. That’s, that’s too crazy. I got $15 million dollars in dreams. Is it possible for me to, to actually get that into a tighter box? Help us understand how do we do that? How do we on the front end be realistic with our finances as we’re doing this design thing?

Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I mean, I think we have to with open hands, we have to hold out the, you know, the dreams, the vision, you know, the stuff that God’s given us. And we have to prayerfully sort of go through that exercise and say, okay, ah but how much risk do I want to introduce into the organization, like via debt?

Rich Birch — Right.

Aaron Stanski — What what is God actually calling us to do with those things? And we have to be creative in how we and and how we get across the finish line. I think when I when I hear sometimes a senior pastor sharing with me his $35 million dollars vision, Rich…

Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.

Aaron Stanski — …what I immediately try to do is say, okay, talk to me about what it is about that $35 million dollar thing that’s resonating with you.

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

Aaron Stanski — And so even though he’s describing something that’s $35 million, dollars and as an architect, I might get really excited about drawing $35 million dollars worth of stuff.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Aaron Stanski — If he actually can’t afford it and can’t raise it, he’s actually not going to go do it.

Rich Birch — Right.

Aaron Stanski — So I need to go back to that vision and say, okay, what are the pieces in there that are from God, that are ah that are aligned with the mission that his church has and stuff? And I need to contextualize that. And then as an architect, as a designer, I have to turn around and say, okay, with my guardrails in place of budget and scope, how do I express those things…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Aaron Stanski — …in the $5 million dollars that God has entrusted our church with? And so there’s going to be a lot of difficult decisions along the way. We’re going to have to prioritize some things. And some other things might have to go on the back burner. But that’s the process that we want to help churches walk through um to to get them to that point where they’re walking into a space for the first time and going, oh, man, this feels like us. Like this is this is who God wants us to be in our community. And I’m so excited about doing ministry in this new space.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. So it’s it’s not, from what I hear you saying, it’s not unreasonable on the front end to be like, hey, we should actually bring, like, be clear on this is this is what we think we can actually raise. This is that what we think we can carry. We think we could do a project of X, whatever. And that needs to be early on in the discussion rather than we’re disappointed on the back end. Oh my goodness, we got this this big number and we don’t know what to do with it.

Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I like to be doing it simultaneously. I like to be doing the Needs Analysis and working through, okay, here’s the eight different project options. You can relocate and spend $35 million. You can add on. You can you can do this. All right, here’s your here’s your four options, $10, $8, $6, $4 million dollars And at the same time, I like to encourage churches to like, okay, go talk to someone like yourself…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Aaron Stanski — …and say, okay, what do we think we could raise if we did a capital campaign? How much debt do we currently have? How do our elders feel about us you know borrowing some money if it if it makes a bigger impact on the project? Because if we can bring those two things together and pray through it and get clarity from God about what he’s asking us to do, then I can go ah help draw buildings and blueprints and things like that. Rich, you can help them raise some money and they and we can you know we can go through that process.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Yeah, it’s great. And you know, my experience has been every one of those steps, friends, is, it’s a lot of work. It’s, it’s like a, it’s a faith ah stretching experience. There are late, late nights staring at the ceiling, but every one of those I’ve been a part of, literally 100% of them have been transformative in the life of the church. You know, when they, when you look back, you’re like, wow, that was an inflection point. I am so glad we went through that. It wasn’t this like we did that and I was like, man, that wasn’t such so good in the end. It was really was amazing.

Rich Birch — Well, there’s a resource that you’ve provided. It’s called 10 Things to Get ah Right Before You Build. Talk to us about this resource and then and then where can where can we want to make sure people get this. Tell us tell us a little bit about this.

Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I mean, like with, you know, church, hundreds of churches calling us, you know, every year, asking a lot of the questions that we’ve talked about today. Like we tried to distill down what are the most common things the churches are like, okay, pause real quick. I got to go do something real fast before we decide that we can sort of move forward. And so some of these things are what happens like while you’re talking to Risepointe and some of these things might be before. But I think it’s just kind of a helpful reminder and ah a thoughtful list to kind of work through.

Aaron Stanski — And so if that’s helpful at all, or if that’s interesting at all, um you can just go to risepointe.com/unseminary. And a little ah little landing page will pop up there. There’s two things you can do on that page. The first one is to just give us your name and your email there and sign up and get that 10 things to download.

Aaron Stanski — I also threw another button on there this morning in case you’re like, hey, that sounds great, but I’ve got I’ve got a specific question I have about our building. Or like, I actually really need to talk to you guys about what our options are. And so I put another button down there at the bottom. If you want to schedule a call with myself or one of our architects, we’d love to hop on the phone with you. No charge for that. 30 minutes. Just kind of talk through where you’re at, what some of your questions are and see if we might be able to help. So ah once again, that’s risepointe.com/unseminary. And you can get all that, all that stuff right there.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s fantastic. That’s risepointe.com/unseminary. And friends, I’ve had multiple friends in ministry who have engaged with with Aaron across the entire spectrum. The like free 30 minute thing all the way up through, you know, the kind of full deal, help get a whole project out the door. And and just so happy with the work that Risepointe does. And just has been transformative for their churches. So you get a hearty endorsement from me. You really should do that. Again, that’s just risepointe.com/unseminary. You can pick this up. It is a helpful little PDF, and the schedule call is a great thing.

Rich Birch — Well, Aaron, I appreciate you being here today.

Aaron Stanski — Yeah.

Rich Birch — If people want to track with you guys or if they’re anywhere else online, obviously risepointe.com. We want to send them to anywhere else online. We want to we want to send them to.

Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, you can always, uh, you know, follow us on the Insta or whatever you want to do there.

Rich Birch — Nice. Love it.

Aaron Stanski — If you’re into like, you know, cool pictures of like steel being erected, ah or, uh, kids ministry stuff or pictures and stuff, we’re trying to share a little bit more info there. But yeah, I mean, or just our website and, uh, yeah, stay connected.

Rich Birch — That’s so good. Thanks for being here and have a good day, buddy.

Aaron Stanski — All right, you too. Bye.

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Tensley Almand, President and CEO of Atlanta Mission, the largest and longest-running provider of services for people experiencing homelessness in the Atlanta metro area. Founded in 1938 as a soup kitchen during the Great Depression, Atlanta Mission now operates four campuses, serving over 800 men, women, and children nightly through programs that provide housing, recovery support, and Christ-centered transformation.

How do you lead through complexity while staying true to your calling? Tensley shares leadership lessons from his transition from church ministry to leading a $20 million nonprofit—insights that apply to every pastor or church leader navigating growth, complexity, or change.

To learn more about Atlanta Mission, visit atlantamission.org or email to connect or schedule a visit.

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!

Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. I am so glad that you have decided to tune in. We’ve got a real honored to have an incredible guest on today’s episode. We’ve got Tensley Almand with us. He is the president and CEO of Atlanta Mission.

Rich Birch — Now, if you don’t know Atlanta Mission, I’m not sure where you’ve been. You really should know. This organization was founded in 1938 as a soup kitchen to feed men who were displaced by the Great Depression. And they just keep chugging along. They do incredible work. They now serve Metro Atlanta’s largest homeless population and bring hope in the face of homelessness, poverty, and addiction.

Rich Birch — Prior to serving at Atlanta Mission, he was in vocational ministry for 20 plus years, the last 12 of those, as we were just saying in the pre-call. He said, felt like he had the the best job in the world, was a lead pastor at Decatur City Church, one of the eight Atlanta City, Atlanta area campuses of North Point Ministries. Tensley, welcome. So glad you’re here.

Tensley Almand — Man, so good to be here. Thanks so much for having me. I’ve been looking forward to this conversation.

Rich Birch — No, this is going to be good. I’m excited. Why don’t you kind of fill in the picture? Tell us a little bit more of your background and tell us a bit more about Atlanta Mission, that kind of thing. Just help set the table.

Tensley Almand — Yeah, so I’m a native Atlantan. I grew up here, born and raised just north of the city. Yeah. Only child. Parents still live north of the city in the same town that I grew up in.

Rich Birch — Nice.

Tensley Almand — My wife and I, we have four kids. We have been married now, just celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary…

Rich Birch — Congratulations. That’s great.

Tensley Almand — …which makes me feel old, but it’s it’s it’s all good. So four kids, three boys, little girl, they’re all just amazing, doing great things and in their worlds. We live over in city of Decatur. So ah for those that don’t know, just kind of just right outside of downtown Atlanta. So we feel like we’re living in the heart of the city.

Rich Birch — Cool.

Tensley Almand — Like you said, I spent 20 plus years on the church side of ministry, which you had told younger me that that was going to be my future, I probably would have laughed at you. Grew up in a family that church just frankly, wasn’t that important to us. My mom gets mad if I say I didn’t grow up in a Christian home, um, which, you know, looking back, I think is really true. I just grew up in a home that we didn’t feel like the church was for us.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — And so, um, after, you know, meeting Jesus in college, giving my life to him, which is a whole nother really cool story, started down the path towards ministry. And eventually several years into that kind of looked up and thought, I don’t know what I’m doing. Like I’m working at these churches that I don’t even want to attend.

Tensley Almand — Like remember this very pivotal meeting in my life where our pastor asked us, he’s like, if I didn’t pay you to go to church here, is this the church you would attend?

Rich Birch — Yes.

Tensley Almand — And every one of us said no.

Rich Birch — Oh, gosh. Oh, my goodness.

Tensley Almand — And they were all okay with it.

Rich Birch — Oh, no.

Tensley Almand — And I just like something broke in me.

Rich Birch — Oh, no. Oh, no. Yeah.

Tensley Almand — And I remember going home and I told my wife, I was like, I can’t do this anymore.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — And so I started the process of just trying to find a job. But the problem is I’ve genuinely felt called by God to ministry. And so God used that to, to lead us down the path of starting Decatur City Church. And, um, our whole dream was just to create a church that people who didn’t like church would love to attend.

Tensley Almand — And so, which is really cool. Again, it’s probably a whole other episode, but really cool because we got to do that in one of the most unchurched cities in Atlanta. 70% of the people who live in Decatur ah don’t go to a church. And Decatur, for those who don’t know, small little town right outside of a big city.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — But literally, there’s over 600 churches in that town. So we used to say all the time, nobody wakes up on Sunday wondering where a church is. They just wake up wondering if church is for them.

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Tensley Almand — And so that’s, that’s the thing we tried to solve. Right.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — And so did that for 12 years, thought I would do that with my whole life. Just an amazing season. And then God called me out of there to Atlanta Mission. And so for those who don’t know, and we can get into that story here if you want to, but, for those who don’t know, Atlanta mission, like you said, it’s the largest and longest running provider of services…

Rich Birch — Wow.

Tensley Almand — …for men, women, and children experiencing homelessness in our city. So for perspective, what that means is on any given night, we’ll have about 800 men, women, or children who are staying with us.

Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. That’s a significant operation. That’s, that’s incredible.

Tensley Almand — It’s a significant operation.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Tensley Almand — It represents that in our city, that represents about 35 to 40% of all the shelter beds in Atlanta.

Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.

Tensley Almand — So that’s, it’s a, it’s pretty remarkable opportunity that we do that across three campuses in downtown Atlanta.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Tensley Almand — One for men, two for women and children.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Tensley Almand — And then we have this really cool drug and alcohol addiction facility out near Athens, which is about an hour outside of town, on 550 acre farm that is just beautiful ah for men who are in recovery from addiction.

Rich Birch — Wow. Oh my goodness. Huh.

Tensley Almand — So yeah.

Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s, that’s incredible. i’m I’m glad you started with the kind of community size that you’re you’re serving. That’s, that’s amazing. Give me a sense of the operation from like a, you know, total number of staff, other kinds of metrics. Like I’m just trying to, I know, you know, you’re not a kind of person that’s going to brag about that kind of stuff, but just trying to help people kind of place, because this is a significant operation, friends. Atlanta Mission is it’s a world-class organization doing great work and honored to have you on this the show. But people might not be ah kind of aware of the the scale of it. Give us a bit more sense of that.

Tensley Almand — Yeah, no, it’s a, it’s a good question. I appreciate you asking. Cause yeah, I definitely don’t, I don’t want to, I don’t like going there, but…

Rich Birch — Yes. And it’s even just, it’s a funny thing to, it’s a funny thing to even like, it’s like, well, we’re really good. It’s like, it’s like, well, yeah, it’s a tough thing you’re doing. So it’s like, man, it’s a weird thing to kind of try to but get ah your arms around. How, how do we talk about this? Yeah.

Tensley Almand — Yeah. So let me kind of give you scope and then let me talk a little bit about what we’re doing. So scope is ah we’re we’re about a $20 million dollars a year organization.

Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.

Tensley Almand — And so just like every church out there, that means, you know, we start July as the start of our fiscal year and we start at zero…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Tensley Almand — …and then we go and raise $20 million dollars…

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — …to meet the need of our expenses. And we do that through mainly private and and corporate donations. And so…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Tensley Almand — …we’re almost a hundred percent privately funded this year.

Rich Birch — Oh, wow.

Tensley Almand — We, we, we took our very first government grant.

Rich Birch — Huh.

Tensley Almand — But I mean, it’s a $250,000 grant, which is not insignificant, but on the scope of 20 million. So that kind of gives everybody an idea. So you’re talking about, uh, you know, thousands of donors who come alongside of us to partner with us, which is just amazing.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Amazing. Yeah.

Tensley Almand — We serve about 800 men, women, and children, like I said,

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Tensley Almand — And we have right at about 180 staff…

Rich Birch — Wow.

Tensley Almand — …who are who are either you know full-time equivalents basically here with us. And that’s across four different campuses. So we’re essentially like a multi-site operation. So I’m sitting here at my office today, which is basically our mission support center.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Tensley Almand — So your accounting, HR, development team, all of your infrastructure, and we support the work that’s happening all over our city.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — And then we also have three thrift stores across Northeast Georgia that’s included in that head count.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Tensley Almand — And so a little bit of that 20 million that I was telling you about that that revenue comes from sales as well. And so, so yeah, it’s pretty broad organization. And then what we do, a lot of people think about you know Atlanta Mission, especially here in our city, and they just think emergency shelter.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — Certainly what we do. But of those 800 beds, roughly only 40% of those go towards emergency shelter. And so if you…

Rich Birch — Oh, really? OK.

Tensley Almand — Yeah. And so if you show up at our door and you just need safety, security, stability, um, you’re just trying to like get off the street…

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — …we have a program called Find Hope…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Tensley Almand — …and it’s a 30-day program. You can stay with us rent free 30 days. You know, bed meals, showers, really, really, really, really low expectation on those clients.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — It’s just like, hey, we’re here to meet your needs.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool.

Tensley Almand — The other 60% of our beds go towards what we call our transformational model…

Rich Birch — Okay.

Tensley Almand — …where we provide complete wraparound services. It’s about a year long program.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Tensley Almand — You show up and we’re going to try to help you get healthy relationally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, vocationally. We’ve got counselors, we’ve got advocates, we’ve got social workers. You have a whole team…

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — …that works with you, walks with you for a year…

Rich Birch — Wow.

Tensley Almand — …depending on really your core traumas, what’s caused your homelessness. And our main goal, our mission is to transform through Christ the lives of those who are experiencing homelessness, poverty, and addiction.

Tensley Almand — And so what we want to do, what that means to us is over the course of that year, Um, we want to give you the tools to identify your traumas, understand those traumas and ultimately break the cycles so that you don’t ever have to come back to our doors again. We we tell our clients, we love you, but we don’t ever want to see you again. Like this is just like, like, how do we…

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. This was a phase of your life, hopefully, right?

Tensley Almand — Yeah.

Rich Birch — That’s the goal.

Tensley Almand — How do we end that for you? And so our program goes through all the counseling, all the services, and it wraps up in a vocational training program we call Next Steps that…

Rich Birch — Wow. That’s amazing.

Tensley Almand — …that gives our clients the soft skills they need to not just get a job. Because here’s here’s what’s really cool. You you would get this. Our clients are really good at getting jobs. But like so many people out there, we’re terrible at keeping a job.

Rich Birch — Right. Right. Right. Yes.

Tensley Almand — Like people don’t know the skills needed to like keep a job. Like how do you manage conflict?

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Tensley Almand — What do you do with that boss who’s just overbearing? How do you have normal workplace conversations?

Rich Birch — Yes.

Tensley Almand — And so we have a ah four week training program that gives our clients those skills. And what we’re finding is that for the clients who go all the way through our program, 70% of those who graduate our program, they still have a house or a living situation a year later.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Tensley Almand — And they are maintaining that job a year later.

Rich Birch — Wow. That’s incredible.

Tensley Almand — And so it’s just been a remarkable, remarkable journey. And so we’ve got some transitional housing in there…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Tensley Almand — …where you graduate our program, you stay with us, we help you save up and and we help you find an apartment. And then when you’re ready financially and you’re you’re stable, we help you move into that that apartment.

Tensley Almand — And what’s really cool, probably one of my favorite things is for alumni is that year after you graduate, you get a retention coach with us and they walk with you. And they just help you navigate life because, man, when you’ve stayed somewhere for a year and then you kind of come back in and you’re like, oooh, the pressures of the world are on me. That first year is so tough.

Rich Birch — So hard. Yeah.

Tensley Almand — Yeah. Yeah.

Rich Birch — Well, that’s cool. I appreciate you sharing that. and And yeah, even church leaders that are listening in, um man, ah there whether if you’re in the Atlanta area, you definitely should reach out to Atlanta Mission.

Rich Birch — But even in your neighborhood, like there are, this is why you shouldn’t be trying to invent this yourself as a church. There are these are incredibly complex issues that you know when I heard all of the the different things you’re doing to surround people, try to help them, um that’s that’s inspiring. That’s amazing.

Rich Birch — Well, I’d love to pivot and talk about kind of your experience as you’ve transitioned in, like some try to extract some leadership lessons. It’s been said that one of the first things that leaders do is define reality or gain clarity for their for their organization.

Rich Birch — When you first started early on in your role, what were you listening for or look for that told you, maybe there’s some areas here that just aren’t very clear? What did you see as you were, you know, we got to bring some more clarity in the organization? Were there things you kind of saw that that made you think, oh, we maybe this is some areas we need to gain some better clarity as an organization?

Tensley Almand — Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think, you know, every leadership transition is different. One of the advantages I had is that what my predecessor was leaving me was so much different than what he inherited.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Tensley Almand — And so he inherited an organization that was in crisis. He handed me an organization that was thriving. But, that organization really was, and he was, and it’s it’s all kind of wrapped up in our story, is that it was time for him to retire. It was time for him to move on. And so the whole organization was asking what’s next. And so that’s, that’s one advantage I had is that there was this collective, like, well, like what what is next for us? That was helpful.

Tensley Almand — The other advantage I had, and I did not think this was an advantage. But, you know, I, I came out of church ministry. I didn’t know how to lead a nonprofit. I didn’t know anything about homelessness.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — Tensley Almand — I didn’t know much about social services. And so, yeah I truly believe God called me into this, but I couldn’t come in like an expert.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — And so I literally was forced to, my I tell people my door said CEO, but I think I was really the chief question officer. I mean, my my first year…

Rich Birch — Help me understand. Help me understand.

Tensley Almand — …was, yeah, asking questions. I can I can vividly remember our clinical director coming into my office and saying, hey, we’ve got this massive clinical decision that we need to make and there’s this and this and this. And you know and then like trying to leave that way. What do you think we should do? And I’m like… you’re the clinical director. Like, what do what do you mean?

Rich Birch — Yes.

Tensley Almand — But that was again, and this is and he would say this if he was sitting here, my predecessor had an organization that was in crisis. And so every decision had to center on him. And I needed to come in and teach our team how to have a decentralized leadership. How like, hey, look you’re the clinical director I’m going to support you, I’m to remove obstacles for you. But if I have to make clinical decisions, we’re we’ve got a really big problem because I’m not qualified to make that decision.

Tensley Almand — And so um really pushing leadership down…

Rich Birch — yeah

Tensley Almand — …asking a lot of questions, understanding what we do. And so that was that was a huge advantage that that i think a lot of people probably, they can like I did, they they think about the things that are stacked against them. To me, it’s like you don’t know anything about the space. That’s a big obstacle.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — Well, maybe lean into those obstacles because it’s a really good way to to get underneath the hood. And so it forced me to ask questions, forced me to listen. And then what I did is I I truly went on a just a listening tour.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Tensley Almand — I set up a meeting, I think, with every employee of our organization.

Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.

Tensley Almand — And I asked everybody what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s missing and what’s confusing.

Rich Birch — Huh.

Tensley Almand — And I still have that notebook.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — I mean, my assistant like cataloged answers for days.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — And what was so cool to me was that without having the same language, almost everybody in the organization identified the same rights, wrongs, missings and confusions. And so I was able to then take that and really come back to our senior team and say, hey, what should we do about this? Like we all…

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — We all agree this is a problem. like What should we do do? And I think a colleague of mine, I remember walking into his office and he had this drawing on his board. I’m like, what is what is that? He’s like, well, is how I feel about our organization. I remember it was ah it was a circle.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Tensley Almand — And all the arrows were pointed in every direction around the circle. And he’s like, that’s us. Like, we’ve got the right idea…

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — …but everybody’s pulling in a hundred directions to try to figure out how to do that idea.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Tensley Almand — and I said, man, we need to take that circle and get all those arrows on one side. Cause if we can collectively pull… and that just kind of became our quest. And so we took all those answers and, you know, basically the the big thing was, um you know, and I don’t know where I learned this, but I feel like when there’s clarity in an organization, ‘no’ is really easy and ‘yes’ is is really difficult. It’s like really easy to say no.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Tensley Almand — And what I found at Atlanta Mission was we were just saying yes to everything. And the reason we were saying yes to everything is because there was no strategy, there was no clarity.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Tensley Almand — And so we took that first year and a half, wrote our strategic plan, identified who we want to be and why we want to be that. And then what would it look like to be that organization? And so we just kind of built it backwards. And that’s the journey we’ve been on now for the last four years since I’ve been here.

Rich Birch — Wow. That’s, ah yeah, that’s incredible. I love that that feeling. In fact, i I took over a nonprofit ah kids camp and much smaller scale than what you’re running. But I remember those early days where there yeah people are looking at you and and and there is this sense of like, okay, so like you got to tell us where we’re going. What is the thing we’re doing next? Like and it’s easy to like… the easy thing is, let’s try this. Let’s try that. Let’s do a bunch of different things. And that can lead to that pulling, those hundred different, you know, it’s lots of activity, but it’s not focused.

Tensley Almand — Yeah.

Rich Birch — And trying to get everybody on a kind of a shared page of or shared picture of what the future looks like, man, that’s great through this, this process of kind of we’re going to do a strategic plan over a year. What, what would you, what would you say to a leader that is feeling the pressure of like, Hey, I want to define the future now, as opposed to that feels like a step back. We’re going to year and a half and define this stuff. What would you say to a leader? Why should we slow down? Talk us through why that, how that benefited now that you’re on the other side of all that.

Tensley Almand — Yeah, I think the first thing I would say is it’s it’s totally worth it. I mean, it it was hard. It was challenging. It it does feel like a step back. But I don’t know how to step forward without without clarity, you know.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — And that’s, you said at the beginning, I got to ah got to be one of the campus pastors at North Point Community Church for years. I can remember Andy always saying, The beauty of North Point wasn’t that we got to start with a blank page, just that we started on the same page.

Rich Birch — That’s good

Tensley Almand — And I just think that like that, that is always set with me. And so when I when I started here, I realized like, hey, I don’t I don’t get the luxury of a blank page. I mean, this organization has been around since 1938. You know, when I when I started Decatur City, it was so easy because I just told everybody what we were doing and why we were doing it and there was nothing else we were doing.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — And so it was just like… But here it’s like, OK, if I can’t get to a blank page, the best thing I can do is we’ve got to get on the same page…

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — …or else we’re just we’re going to spin our tires. And, and you know, I think I’ll I’ll this story probably sums it up and maybe somebody can relate to this. I have a monthly breakfast with our board chair and our vice chair. And the very first breakfast I went to in this role, it was my predecessor’s last breakfast and my first. And so we’re all so it’s him, it’s me and it’s a board chair a vice chair, all of which have been around this organization 3x the amount of time I had at that point, I had been there like three days.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Couple weeks.

Tensley Almand — And and we got this email the night before the breakfast, and it was from a developer. And they were offering $14 million dollars for the piece of property that my office sits on, which is a widely underused piece of property…

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — …that we’ve always kind of wrestled with, like, what do we do with this thing?

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — $14 million dollars.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Tensley Almand — That’s almost our entire year’s budget.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Tensley Almand — And I remember showing up to this breakfast with this LOI and I asked the question, should we take it or should we not?

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — And nobody could answer my question.

Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.

Tensley Almand — Nobody knew if it was a good idea to take $14 million dollars or to walk away from $14 million dollars

Rich Birch — And if that group doesn’t know, nobody else in the organization is going to know, right?

Tensley Almand — And that’s exactly what I said. I was like, if you don’t know, and I don’t know…

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yes, exactly.

Tensley Almand — …nobody knows.

Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.

Tensley Almand — And so I started with that small group and I said, hey, would you give me the freedom to to take however long it takes for us to make sure we can answer that question?

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Tensley Almand — And so in our first board meeting, I raised my hand and I just said, hey guys, I know I’m new, I know I just started. But I shared the story and I said, hey, we have to be able to answer questions like this. Or we’re never going to get anywhere. We may do a lot of good things, but we are going to have no idea if we did the best thing.

Rich Birch — Right, right. That’s good. That’s good. So kind of double clicking on that, continuing to kind of focus in on this. You know, there are churches, organizations that will do the strat plan or roll. We go away for the big retreat. We come up with the new value statements. It’s got great strategy on paper. But it doesn’t end up translating into practice. What are you doing at the mission to try to make sure that we’re going from that wasn’t just a great document that’s like in a nice book somewhere, but it’s actually rolling out. Maybe give us some examples of that. And what are those kind of rhythms, cadences, all that? How how are you making that happen?

Tensley Almand — Yeah, it’s wish I could really tell you we’re crushing it in this area. It’s this is a new habit for us.

Rich Birch — Sure. Sure. Good.

Tensley Almand — And so we’re I’m four years in. We just finished our first full fiscal year under our new strategy. And so I can tell you what we’ve learned.

Rich Birch — Hey, that’s good. Yeah, good.

Tensley Almand — One, once you get it built you have to start small. We, I wish I could remember the exact number, I think as a senior team we committed and told our board we were going to do 392 new initiatives or something in year one, you know.

Rich Birch — Wow. Right.

Tensley Almand — And this is a seven-year plan…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Tensley Almand — …we’re like we got almost for it and I think we got 100 through of the 392.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — And we celebrated like crazy at the end of the year because it was like, that’s 100 things that were all in alignment that we’d never done before. We learned so much. So, start small.

Tensley Almand — The other thing is we built our plan. And I was I was very intentional about this because of what you just said. I did not want another notebook that was going to sit on my shelf. And so our strategic plan is really a strategic roadmap. And what I have told our board, what I’ve told our staff is I want an organization that knows how to think.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Tensley Almand — And our our plan is really a roadmap for how we should think. It’s not overly prescriptive in necessarily what that means. Because it’s it’s designed to take us all the way through 2030.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — Well, I have no idea what’s going to happen between now and 2030.

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Tensley Almand — But I do know that if what we said we want to accomplish, we’re accomplishing, however that looks, by 2030, we’re on the right track. And so that would be the other thing is just like, I would build, I wouldn’t make it so prescriptive that it tells you like, Hey, next week you’re doing this. And the week after… It needs to teach the organization how to think, how to act so that the person who’s brand new on the front line, if I’m not in the room, they don’t need to spend any time going like what, what would Tensley want me to do? They just, this is who we are as an organization. It’s how we think.

Tensley Almand — And then we at a senior level and then we pushed it all the way down to our organization. We built a meeting cadence around it.

Rich Birch — Nice.

Tensley Almand — And so we have our senior team meets once a week.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Tensley Almand — That’s my six direct reports and plus my admin.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Tensley Almand — And we, one, so we do that on Tuesday morning, one, the first Tuesday of the month is a strategy meeting. We talk all about the strategic plan. That’s like a, how how are you doing and your department doing towards what you said you were gonna do?

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Tensley Almand — And we have a dashboard to measure that against. And then the next Tuesday is an operations meeting. And it’s just like, hey, what are what are we working on? We can’t live at 50,000 feet all the time.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — Let’s get down to 1,000 feet or whatever it is.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Tensley Almand — And so we have that operations cadence. And then the third meeting is kind of like a catch-all, like, hey, what you know what needs to happen? And then our last meeting of the month is a monthly ministry review with the entire, not just my direct reports, but all the managers that sit under my direct reports.

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s cool.

Tensley Almand — And they lead that meeting. I listen in that meeting. And I get to hear what’s happening at every campus, what’s going on. And I get to hear how people are implementing or not implementing the strategy.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — And then the very next meeting, if you’re keeping up, is then our strategy meeting.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Tensley Almand — So then I’m like, hey…

Rich Birch — Here’s some stuff I heard.

Tensley Almand — …tell me more about this.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. Yes.

Tensley Almand — Or I didn’t hear like, Hey, I thought we were working on this. Why is that not happening? And so we have dashboards.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.

Tensley Almand — We’ve never had those before. We have data that we can follow. We have metrics we’ve identified as a, as a team, our wins. And so it’s like, Hey, how are we tracking towards those wins and just have created a layer of accountability that didn’t exist probably three years ago.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Let’s talk a little bit more about the data thing. I’ve, or data thing. We, I’ve, I’ve said with younger leaders, you know, spreadsheets are the language of leadership. Like you’re going to have to get used to this stuff. This is just…

Tensley Almand — Yep.

Rich Birch — …this is how we care for people at scale is, is that is what it looks like. So data can either inspire or intimidate. How do you track outcomes? How do you, how do you how have you seen, you know, data over this last year actually change behavior and move things, improve care, better outcomes, all that kind of stuff. Talk us through what, cause you know, what we measure can get, can, you know, steer us in the wrong direction or steer us in the right direction. Help, help us think through that. As we’re thinking about what numbers should we pay attention to?

Tensley Almand — Yeah. So again, when I started, that was a big question I had. So if you were to look at our numbers, you would see that we serve, you know, let’s, these are rough, but right at about 3000 people a year come through our doors.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Tensley Almand — Right. Which is huge.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Tensley Almand — You’re like, man, that’s amazing. Well, then I, as I walk you through that, by the time you get to the end of our vocational training a year later, we may graduate like 400. And then 70% of those 400 are still doing well the the next year. And so, you know, on paper, you’re like, man, is that good?

Rich Birch — Right. Yes.

Tensley Almand — Like that, that there’s a lot of attrition there.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — Like should, is, is, are we fail… And that was, again, when I started, that was a question nobody could answer for me is, Hey, is that good?

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — And so even backing up before we built our strategy, our senior team spent so much time defining our outcomes. And we had all of these statements, you know, but it was like we want somebody to be healthy vocationally.

Tensley Almand — It’s like, okay, what does that mean? Crickets in the room.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Tensley Almand — Wait, if you don’t know what it means and I don’t know what it means, does the person who’s leading that program know what it means? Better question: does the person who’s receiving our services know if they’ve actually achieved help in that area?

Tensley Almand — And so we went through, defined all of those terms so that there was a clear outcome to it…

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — …so that we could then measure it. And then we built both a one-page dashboard that our senior team could look at at a high level. So I could I can open this dashboard on any Monday morning. It’s just in Tableau, so nothing super you know exciting.

Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.

Tensley Almand — And I can just see, i can see progression through our program. I can see healthy exits. We’ve defined what are healthy exits. I can see, ah you know, are people getting stuck? That was a big thing we were we were learning is like, people are just getting stuck in our program and we’re committing to somebody. You’re going to be at this phase of the program 30 days. Well, then they spend 60 days.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — And what we were finding. We were, so this, this probably long winded way of saying this, but what we, we didn’t know what was happening or why it was happening and it felt good. But you know, you’re like, I don’t know.

Tensley Almand — And so what we were finding is it’s like, Hey, so that’s an example. Like, somebody gets stuck in our program. We promised them 30. It takes 60. All of a sudden, we were able to track that, hey, there’s a certain amount of fallout rate at this stage of the program. Why is that happening? Oh, people are stuck. They’ve been here too long.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — We got to fix that. And so it it enabled us to know what needed to be fixed and and not fixed.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Tensley Almand — And probably the the best real-time example of that is just recently. So I keep telling you the 70% number of graduates are successful. That’s kind of our historical data.

Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.

Tensley Almand — Well, this year, that number fell for the first time ever. It’s gotten better every year.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Tensley Almand — This year it fell and it fell like dramatically. And this is one of those I don’t like to talk about it because it doesn’t look good.

Rich Birch — Interesting. Yes.

Tensley Almand — I mean, like it fell down to almost like 45, 50 percent.

Rich Birch — Oh, wow.

Tensley Almand — You’re like, what’s happening?

Rich Birch — Almost inverse. Yeah, yeah. Wow.

Tensley Almand — Exactly. And so at first, you’re like, our program is no good. We got rewrite our program. Well, thankfully, we had been tracking all of the kind of whys and we understood what was happening in people’s lives. And what we have found out is no, like the economy shifted. You can’t get a job in 30 to 60 days anymore.

Rich Birch — Interesting.

Tensley Almand — And so a gate in our program is when you graduate, you have 60 days to get a job. If you don’t get a job, you can’t move into our transitional housing because if we just allow you to stay, beds back up and then more people can’t get in.

Tensley Almand — Well, our clients then would stop taking our advice and stop waiting for a good job. And at day like 50, they would just go get that job that doesn’t pay well.

Rich Birch — Ohhh.

Tensley Almand — And they knew it wasn’t going to be a career builder job. It was just going to keep them sheltered.

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Tensley Almand — And so it was our our like metrics were actually driving a behavior we didn’t like.

Rich Birch — That’s interesting.

Tensley Almand — And so we’re in the process now of like, hey, we’ve got to change this. The length of time it takes to get a job now takes longer. and

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — The job market’s more you know fierce right now.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — And so we don’t want nothing against these types of jobs. We don’t necessarily want our client leaving to go get a job at McDonald’s

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — But for them, leaving it to go get a job at McDonald’s versus not having a place to stay, I’ll take the McDonald’s job…

Rich Birch — Right. Yes.

Tensley Almand — …even though I know I’m only going to be there three months.

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Tensley Almand — And so it was throwing off all of our numbers and it’s because we were incorrectly driving a behavior that we don’t want to drive. So.

Rich Birch — Wow. That’s cool. That’s a great, very vivid example. And there’s lots of that in the church world. I know you I know you know that. There was a church I was doing some work with last year, large church, 10,000-person church. And they were we were talking one of the numbers I obsess with my clients over is documented first-time guests, the actual number of people that come every single weekend. And I was convinced that this church was just was missing a whole bunch of first time guests. And so they were telling me about how great their, their, their assimilation numbers were. They were like, Oh, this is so great. And I was like, I just don’t believe it. I’m like, because, because if you are not capturing the number of, of documented first time guests, then yeah and you’re comparing against half of what you probably actually have coming into your church, then then every number be below that, all your integration stuff looks twice as good as it actually is.

Tensley Almand — Yeah.

Rich Birch — And you know that that happens in lots of places across our numbers. We’ve got to get real clear and benchmark against other people.

Tensley Almand — If I could go back and if I could go back, no, no, it’s just, like I’ve often thought like, what would I do different if I was a church leader now?

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s a good question.

Tensley Almand — And I would I would measure so much differently.

Rich Birch — Yeah, interesting.

Tensley Almand — You know, historically we’ve measured nickels and noses, right? Like how much money’s coming in and how many people are sitting in the pews. But it’s like, those are important.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Tensley Almand — I wouldn’t stop measuring them, but I would pay attention to like this. I would try to find a way to measure progression, you know.

Rich Birch — Yes, 100%.

Tensley Almand — It’s like to your point how many first-time guests are you having okay well then of those first-time guests how many of them are actually moving to your small groups.

Rich Birch — Yeah, 100%.

Tensley Almand — Of those who moved your small groups do any of them ever volunteer like and and really understand the behaviors you want. And then measure to those behaviors and i think especially in a world where just church attendance looks so much so much different, we could gauge health of our churches so much more effectively if we were

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so true. I’d love to I’d love to kind of pivot for a few minutes in a slightly different direction.

Tensley Almand — Okay.

Rich Birch — So we have a lot of church leaders that are listening in and I’d love to understand how Atlanta Mission partners with churches. What does that look like? How do you work together? So specifically at Atlanta misha, and then what would you, Mission, and then what would you say to churches in general? Hey, um what advice would you give now that you’re on this side of the equation of actually partnering with an organization like Atlanta Mission? How can you be kind of the best partner? How do we what are what are people on your side of the table actually looking for from a church like ours? Because I’m sure there’s all kinds of stories of like, yeah, that didn’t work well. Talk us through what that looks like, partnerships specifically, and then kind of in general, how can we be better at that?

Tensley Almand — Yeah, and partnership is one of our pillars of our strategic plan. I think I think for nonprofits, especially when you’re large and you’re self-funded, you can it’s easy to get siloed. And we we fell into that category, not just with outside partners that wanted to come in and help us, but also with other service providers across the the, you know, continuum of care in our city. is It’s just it’s easy to kind of put your head down and do your own thing.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — And so this is a huge emphasis for us, mainly because it’s really woven into the vision of our organization. Our organization is a community that’s united to end homelessness one person at a time. Well, I mean, it’s like partnership has to be built into that.

Rich Birch — Right. Yes, baked into it. Yeah.

Tensley Almand — So what who are we to then go get siloed? Like, that’s like, wow, you can’t even accomplish what you said you wanted to do. And so um we… I’ll back into this answer by telling you one of the things we’ve discovered at Atlanta Mission is that this isn’t this, you know, this isn’t novel, but, you know, material poverty, we all know is debilitating. Relational poverty is just as debilitating as material poverty.

Rich Birch — That’s so true.

Tensley Almand — And what we find with our clients is that almost 100 percent obviously are struggling with some version of material poverty, but they are just relationally broken and poor. They are void of healthy relationships. And so this is this is so much where partnership comes in, because we we literally have a metric that we track of how many healthy contacts does a client have in their phone before they graduate our program. And what we were finding is I mean we were their only healthy contact.

Rich Birch — Oh, wow.

Tensley Almand — And it’s wait this is this is not good. And this is such a great place for churches to partner with us because we have so many opportunities that we just call we call them “be with” opportunities there’s like there’s “do for” service projects but there’s also “be with” service projects. And they’re just designed for you to establish healthy community with our clients, build relationships, throw a birthday party for somebody…

Rich Birch — That’s so good. Right.

Tensley Almand — …have a Christmas party at one of our shelters. Come, you know, we’re moving into the holiday season, you know, come and build gingerbread houses together with our kids who are staying with us and just create an hour in somebody’s life that’s normal.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — And I feel like churches are better at this than anybody. Our corporate partners are fantastic at the “do for” projects. They can then come in and beautify our campuses in 30 minutes in a way that none of us can.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — You know, Home Depot comes in and it’s like, we’re going to transform your landscape. Great. This is awesome.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.

Tensley Almand — I love it. But a church can come in and just be authentic and be real and be with our clients.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Tensley Almand — And you would be amazed at how different somebody’s life looks after just that hour. And so, and I think that’s a huge thing. And then what I would tell churches, I think even as a church leader, I I probably overlooked how vital we were to nonprofits. You just you know, you think it’s an hour, but you know, even the day of, you know, you wake up that morning and you’re like, they don’t really need me. Like, I don’t know.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — This is, am I not really going to make a difference? Yes, you are.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Tensley Almand — You are going to make a huge difference. It is worth the hour. It is worth the drive.

Tensley Almand — And we we tell people all the time, and I’ve seen this in my own life. The thing that happens at Atlanta Mission is there’s always two stories of transformation happening. There’s the story of transformation that’s happening in a client’s life. But God transforms my life every day.

Rich Birch — That’s so true.

Tensley Almand — And it’s that’s the part I didn’t expect, Rich, is that…

Rich Birch — Right.

Tensley Almand — …my life is being changed as much as anybody else’s. And so I would, I would tell a church, Hey, our clients need you. But you need this as well.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Tensley Almand — Like God’s going to do something in your life.

Tensley Almand — And then the other is just, um I think, especially for really big churches, it’s easy to think like, I bet they need my expertise. It’s like, actually, that’s not like. We need your partnership.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.

Tensley Almand — You know, we, we know how to do this. Come put wind in our sails.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah,

Tensley Almand — Come just serve, be a part of what we’re doing.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. That’s super helpful. Love love that. Well, just as we’re coming to land, any kind of final words or encouragement you’d you’d say to church leaders that are listening in today that are, you know, wrestling with maybe clarity or wrestling with some of the stuff we’ve talked about today? This has been a really fruitful conversation. Thank you for it.

Tensley Almand — Yeah, I think the, you know, probably the biggest thing I would say, and I have to tell myself this all the time. I mean, I’m an entrepreneurial type A. I’m going to like, you know, go conquer the world in a day is that, you know, remind yourself, you know, more than likely what you can accomplish in 90 days is nowhere near what you think it is, you know. But what you can accomplish in a year or two years is probably way more than you ever imagined you could.

Rich Birch — Right. So true Yeah, that’s good.

Tensley Almand — And so just again, kind of back to the strategy thing, it takes time. It’s messy. You know, you’re going to feel like, is this worth it? It creates conflict on your team. It feels uncomfortable. We were, we were joking as a senior team the other day. There was, it was about a year where I just, every Tuesday morning, I thought I want to cancel this meeting because I just didn’t enjoy, like we were just, we were at conflict because we were…

Rich Birch — Right. Yes.

Tensley Almand — …hashing out who we are and why we exist and what are we going to do and why are we going to do it?

Rich Birch — Yes.

Tensley Almand — But now it’s my favorite hour of the week. Like, I just love it. And so, you know, I would say that…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Tensley Almand — …you know, and I think, yeah, I don’t know that I have anything, you know, much more.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Tensley Almand — Yeah.

Rich Birch — No, that’s good. Well, I really appreciate being on the show today. Where do we want to send people if they want to connect with you or with Atlanta Mission? Where are the best places for us to send people online?

Tensley Almand — Probably the easiest place is just our website, atlantamission.org. You can find everything you want to about us. If you want to know more, you can email [email protected]. And that actually goes right to my assistant and we’ll get you connected to the right person. And you can, you know, next time you’re in town, you partner with us. You can help us. You can be happy to give you a tour, show you what we do.

Rich Birch — That’s great. Thanks so much, Tensley. Appreciate you being here today.

Tensley Almand — Thanks.

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Jamie Barfield, the Lead Pastor at Palmetto Pointe Church in South Carolina. Palmetto Pointe is one of the fastest-growing churches in the country, with four locations in South Carolina, a campus in Southern Illinois, and Spanish-language services reaching even more people.

Is your church in a season of slow growth or scarcity? Wondering how to stay faithful and creative when resources are tight? Tune in as Jamie shares powerful lessons from 18 years of ministry—how his team built a thriving, multiplying church by embracing perseverance, stewardship, and servant leadership.

To learn more about Palmetto Pointe Church, visit palmettopointechurch.com or connect with Jamie on social media at @pastorjamieb.

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 — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad to have you tune in today. We’ve got a great conversation. Really looking forward to talking to a leader who I know you can learn from, talking about stuff that is really important as we think about our churches and think about the future. It’s our honor today to have Jamie Barfield with us. He is part of the leadership team at Palmetto Pointe Church. I don’t know why that’s stuck in my mouth coming out.

Rich Birch — It’s one of the fastest growing churches in the country with four locations in beautiful Myrtle Beach in South Carolina, a location in Southern Illinois and Spanish services as well. He’s an ordained bishop in the Church of God, serves as a district oh overseer for the Myrtle Beach and surrounding areas. He’s also served, he’s got a lot going on, in the State Evangelism Board for the Church of God in South Carolina. Welcome to the show, Jamie, a real expert on the show today. Appreciate you being here.

Jamie Barfield — I don’t know about expert, but it is an honor to be here. I learned a lot from the school of hard knocks, so I will be definitely able to answer from that point point of view.

Rich Birch — Love it. Well, Palmetto Pointe is one of the fastest growing churches in the country. Now multiple locations, which is we see that 73% of churches over 2000 have multiple locations. For leaders that don’t know the story, kind of give me the story of your church. Tell me a little bit of what’s going on. If it were to arrive this weekend, what would that look like?

Jamie Barfield — Yeah, wild, wild story. 18 years. We just celebrated 18 years.

Rich Birch — Congratulations.

Jamie Barfield — Took us three years to ever break 100. Five years before I was ever getting a paycheck from the church.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Jamie Barfield — Six years before we ever had our own facility. Seven years before I ever had another staff member with me. Right before COVID hit, we were doing four services. And then obviously COVID shut everything down. And last year, God’s favor has just been upon the church the last few years. Last year, we grew about 31% last year – it was wild.

Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. And what does attendance look like now on the weekends at your church?

Jamie Barfield — We had 2,500 last Sunday.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Jamie Barfield — And we had but 2,500 last Sunday and that we we had about, of that probably 2,100 was here at our our main location here in Myrtle Beach.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s incredible. Well, I appreciate that you paced out the timeline there, because I think there’s a lot of church leaders who, or church planters who are in these early days, and it feels like, and the early days could be half a decade, you know, it could be a long time.

Rich Birch — Take us back when you think kind of the mindset of that, what what what was that experience like? How did you keep going? Talk us through what did that look like?

Jamie Barfield — Yeah. Early on, you know, and I talked at a conference last weekend about your “why”, knowing why you’re in this to begin with, knowing why you started and never forgetting the thing that actually put you in ministry to begin with. You know, that moment God called you, that moment that he asked you to do something great for him.

Jamie Barfield — And in those moments or those seasons, um early on specifically, when you were ready to throw in the towel and ready to quit, you always had to be reminded of, okay, God, why am I doing this? What is it that you put inside of me that pushed me to want to do something great for your kingdom?

Jamie Barfield — It was never about a paycheck. It was never about being on an amazing podcast like this. It was never about speaking at conferences. It was always about reaching people with the message of Jesus Christ and doing our best to get that out there. And so in moments where you wanted to throw in the towel and you wanted to quit, you always go back to those seasons of, okay, God, why did you call me into this to begin with?

Rich Birch — And what, what, when you answer that question in your own life, where does that, but you know, kind of, when you think about the why, how, what is what’s the kind of image that comes to mind or language that you wrap around for, for you?

Jamie Barfield — I’m very visual. So I think of standing before the throne of God one day and him saying, well done, my good and faithful servant.

Rich Birch — So good.

Jamie Barfield —And I’m so it’s going to be such a beautiful moment, but it also also motivates me .bBecause I think in that moment that I’m going to go in there almost nervous of the time that I wasted or the time that I gave up or the time that I… And I’m so I’m so motivated by that moment that I just want to stand there and have him look at me with a big smile on his face and say, you did it. You did everything that I put before you to do. You did it. Good job, servant.

Rich Birch — That’s so good. Well, early on, if we could talk for real here…

Jamie Barfield — For real.

Rich Birch — …like church planting, man, it’s it’s it’s tough.

Jamie Barfield — It’s the hardest thing ever.

Rich Birch — And those early years, yeah, those early years, it’s like, I don’t know. It’s like, you’re not rolling in cash. You don’t have the resources. You don’t have the people. Man, how how did that go for you? The kind of scarcity? How did that shape the way you lead, innovate? Talk us through that piece of the puzzle.

Jamie Barfield — Yeah, lack of money, lack of volunteers, lack of influence in the community. You know, it it feels like you know the the word attached to church planting so often is lack. I don’t have enough.

Rich Birch — Yeah, right.

Jamie Barfield — And that mindset inside of church planters, it’s going to be the thing that either crushes them or is going to cause them to innovate. For us, we just decided it was going to be the thing that pushed us or that drove us. And so the scarcity mindset that you spoke about at you know the beginning of ministry was some some things that were birthed inside of us that created some stewardship principles that we still follow today at our church. You know, we’re very much penny pinchers. We’re going to try the best to figure out the best way rather than just throwing money at problems.

Jamie Barfield — You know, I got buddies that, you you know, with the best of intentions, they just think that they can you you know, throw money at situations or at problems and it’s going to fix everything. And our mindset is just, we’re just going to be innovative. We’re going to try to figure this out and do it the best way we can without expecting that money is going to fix everything, or that volunteers are going to fix everything, or that influence is going to fix everything. So even at the start, all of that lack created or birthed something in us that has followed with us for the last 18 years.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I’d I’d love to talk a bit a bit a bit more about that. Well, first of all, I think it’s I think it’s good that you’re underlining mindset. I know for me as a leader, and it took me way too long to figure out that like kind of my approach. You know, I’m not like, ah you know, name it and claim it kind of person. I don’t think I can like, you know, I can’t just like make stuff up.

Jamie Barfield — Sure.

Rich Birch — But what I do know is if I don’t have the faith for it, if I don’t believe that God’s going to do something, then it doesn’t happen.

Jamie Barfield — Yeah, for sure.

Rich Birch — And so I’m not sure how that happens. There’s like a weird connection there between what I believe about faith and like, and I probably some people are like, man, this guy’s got bad theology. But talk us through that mindset and how, maybe give us a couple examples of how that has impacted you even today.

Jamie Barfield — Yeah, yeah. So I agree completely. The the you know concept of name it and claim it versus you got to have faith and where is that balance? And I’m unsure as well, probably got bad theology as well. But I definitely think that, you know especially early on, like it was, God, I see big things in our future. And I’m not sure how to get to big things, but I know I can’t settle with these things that we have now.

Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s good.

Jamie Barfield — So I have to press forward to make the things that we have in our hand now. I have to be a good steward of what you’ve given me. You know, he is faithful with little. You’re going to reward us with much. So, God, I’ve got to be faithful with what you put in my hands now.

Rich Birch — That’s so true.

Jamie Barfield — And I’m going to do the absolute best with this that I have in my hand now. But I’m going to do everything I can to make this thing better. Because I see bigger, because I see greater in front of us.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Jamie Barfield — And so I’m not going to just stop here and say, well, this is all that I have. This is this is all that I’m ever going to be. I’m going to do more for you with what you placed in my hands. I’m going to be that servant that whenever you walk away from me, you gave me two talents. I’m go to do my best to turn it into four.

Rich Birch — Yeah that’s, yeah, that’s amazing. That’s that’s so good. I love, you know, we wanna be multipliers of what, you know, what’s given. And I think the the financial stewardship thing makes sense. I think that’s understandable. You can see where, man, we gotta be good we gotta use the resources we have.

Rich Birch — What about on the people side? When you think about kind of being good stewards of your people, maybe developing leaders, that sort of thing, how does that work? What practices have you helped has have you kind of kept this mindset of innovation, kind of getting the most out of our people, that sort of thing. How has that impacted how what you do even today?

Jamie Barfield — Yeah, so I grew up in a very small church, you know maybe 70, 80 people. Maybe on on big Sundays we had 120 on Easter or something of that nature. And I saw leaders being thrown into situations, not trained well, not knowing church culture, not knowing what expectations were, not knowing the pastor’s heart. I saw all of that growing up.

Jamie Barfield — And those leaders that were thrown in oftentimes would find themselves burnt out by focusing on things that they really had no passion for. And the pastor maybe didn’t know what the thing inside of them that was the thing that really you know would drive them. And so we just decided whenever, you know, probably 10 or 12 years ago, we just decided we were going to create a process of knowing our our leaders and our leaders knowing me well.

Jamie Barfield — And so so we we go through a you know, I tell them all the time as we do a 12 week course. It’s not really we call it leadership development, but it’s not really leadership development. It’s more about you have to learn this culture. You have to learn my heart and my expectations for you.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Jamie Barfield — But I’ve also got to learn your story, and your passion, and your vision. Because I want us to walk away from this 12 weeks together, I want to walk away better prepared for a future together. And so as you’re walking this 12 weeks out with me, you’re you you know they’re serving everywhere in the church and serving in kids ministry one week and you know making coffee one week and all of the things. But what we’re learning in that season together is expectation. And you’re learning me and I’m learning you, but we’re putting expectation on what it takes to be a leader. And so as they finish this 12-week process with me, they then go into this pool of just to even be considered to be a leader in our church.

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s interesting.

Jamie Barfield — So everybody that’s ever been a leader in our church, before they ever get to a leadership role, they’re a part of this pool because they’ve been through this 12-week journey with me. And I’m there with these people every step along the way, because again, I’ve seen it done so poorly that I just wanted to make sure that my fingerprint was upon leaders and volunteers in such a way.

Rich Birch — That’s cool.

Jamie Barfield — You know, there’s again, go back to a parable of Jesus, you know, the sower and the seed, you know, there’s this, there’s this principle of where you sow, if you sow in good soil, that it’s going to produce a good fruit. And so these people that are, that are, have a passion for the kingdom of God and want to do something great for the kingdom of God, those are the people that I want to invest my time, effort, and energy into because those are the people that are going to produce the, the largest or most productive harvest.

Rich Birch — Okay. I want to double click on this.

Jamie Barfield — For sure.

Rich Birch — There’s a ah bunch there that I want to unpack…

Jamie Barfield — For sure.

Rich Birch — …which is fantastic. So how, so how do you identify or how does your team identify people that land in this 12 weeks? And then I’d love to talk a little bit about, you know, the, actually the mechanics of it what’s going on in those 12 weeks.

Jamie Barfield — They have to be recommended by a leader in our church.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Jamie Barfield — It’s the only way to join the 12-week journey.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Jamie Barfield — So a leader in our church sees them, watches them serve or whatever inside of the church, and then they recommend them to my assistant, and we we start the journey with them.

Rich Birch — Okay. And those, is it like you run it in like a couple of seasons during the year? It’s a class and like a cohort matter. What’s the content? Just give us a ah a bit of, you know, a bit more about that.

Jamie Barfield — Yeah, we do we do two… Yeah, we do two semesters of it. So twice a year we run it. And it is ah one night a week. We meet at the church. We go through ah hour, hour and a half you know class type setting with constant homework through the week. And homework looks as simple as, you know, we we read the book, Andy Stanley, Next Generation Leader. We read through that together.

Jamie Barfield — Homework is serving assignments on Sunday. Homework is cleaning the church. You know, little things like that that just creates this culture, this this servanthood inside of them. So once ah once a week, we’re here at the church learning together. But then through the week, we’re constantly um connected and, um you know, again, working, efforting to to sharpen them through the 12 weeks.

Rich Birch — That’s cool. And you know you mentioned it multiple times. So you’ve really kept ownership of this group. They’re meeting with you. That I want to underline for folks that are listening in.

Jamie Barfield — Yeah.

Rich Birch — You know, your church you said is 2,500 people. There’s a lot of pastors of a church of 2,500 that would say, hey, I don’t have time to meet with this. Kind of unpack that a little bit more. I know you mentioned this already, but I want to kind of unpack what what are you thinking about there? What’s the advantage? How far does that scale, you think?

Jamie Barfield — Yeah, I am a huge advocate of whatever it is that you do, whatever’s on your plate. There’s some things that you have to do as a pastor or as a leader. And leadership development ought to be something that you have your fingerprint on.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Jamie Barfield — Whether it’s [inaudible] as much as mine is or whether it’s just, hey, I’m creating class and I’m stepping in every now and then, but somewhere, somehow, you have to be touching your leaders in the church and they have to know your heart.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Jamie Barfield — Whenever they go away from this class and they’re serving wherever, and maybe even they’re on a campus or doing whatever they’re doing, when they walk away from me, they know me, they know my heart, they know my, my expectations.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Jamie Barfield — And so I don’t have to go into, you know, seasons and step into kids ministry and try to put out fires and fix problems because they know me from the start before they ever get involved in certain ministries. They already know me and already know my heart. And so it just makes the the family community atmosphere of the church healthier…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Jamie Barfield — …because from from birth, this is from birth. This isn’t something that we’re trying to teach on the run. This is something we teach from birth to through the process. And then whenever they launch into whatever ministry they um lead or or serve in they already have all the foundational principles, all the pillars are built.

Rich Birch — That’s interesting. I love it. That’s, that’s great to learn more about. Talk to me about an expectation that ah that you have of your leaders that might be a little bit different. That might be like, oh, hey, it’s, you know, kind of in the secret sauce category that you’re like, hey, this is a part of what God’s using when, you know, hey, if you’re leading here, this is what we want you to be like, or something activity or something like that.

Jamie Barfield — Yeah. So so for instance, servanthood is something that I’m very passionate about. I am a servant. I expect leaders here at this church to be servants. I think Jesus is the greatest leader of all time, and he was a servant leader. It’s who he was. It was a part of his you know, character. And so, so servanthood is something that we, my wife and I portray to our leadership. And then we give expectation that this is what we expect from leaders inside of our church and throughout every department of our church.

Jamie Barfield — I think that is, that is, you know, something as simple as when you see some trash in the parking lot, as you’re walking up, you pick it up. All the way to when we’re having church events here, my wife and I are the last ones to eat. We’re not first in line.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Jamie Barfield — We’re making sure everybody else is served because we want we want to make sure that we are servant leaders inside of our our team.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. So I’d love to know, you guys have launched multiple locations, obviously multiple services within that. Multiplication is, to me, is a sign that you’re developing leaders. There’s something good happening on that front. You can’t do that unless you, you know, have multiplied leaders. Talk us through some of the lessons you’ve learned around multiplication as it relates to leadership development and how that all works together.

Jamie Barfield — Yeah, I will say that good leaders multiply themselves, but so do bad leaders.

Rich Birch — Oh gosh, that’s true. Oh man.

Jamie Barfield — And so that’s and so that’s that that’s that’s dangerous as well.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jamie Barfield — And so as as we multiplied, you know, from multiple services to, you know, multiple campuses and all the things that come with multiplication, as we have walked through the seasons of multiplication, we’ve always identified early the needs that were going to be present and tried our best to make an effort to make them not as painful as they could have been if we wouldn’t have identified them.

Jamie Barfield — And so something as simple as you know whenever we you know we were talking about launching multiple services, when when we launched into multiple times, we’ve launched into multiple services and been able to you know, through growth, knock out walls and go back to one and then we’re at two and then we’re at three, knock out a wall, back to one, two, three. And then right at COVID, we were doing four. But the the healthiest way that we ever launched a service was we did a 8 a.m. and a 10 a.m. The 8 a.m. was for volunteers only. So it was kids’ workers. It was, you know, we did, but did we did a full service. We did the band. We did I did my full sermon. It was volunteers only, but you’re welcome to come.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jamie Barfield — But this is strictly, you know, we’re focusing on volunteers. But then whenever we launched into two, as that second service filled up, we launched into two. We completely changed service times. What was a 10 a.m. service, now we went to 9 and 11. So then everybody was forced and instead instead of saying, oh, well, this is my service time. Now everybody was forced to choose a different service time.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jamie Barfield — So the 8 a.m. people we you know went to the 9 a.m., obviously, and the 10 a.m. people had to choose, do I want to get up an hour early or do I want to come an hour later?

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Jamie Barfield — And so it was almost it was actually a 45 to 65 percent split whenever we went to the 9 and the 11. So it was the healthiest way we had ever done it, so incredibly beautiful.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Jamie Barfield — And so just, you know, if somebody’s watching this and they’re looking to go to two services, I would suggest have a volunteer service, go all in because that starts training your your band to do two services. It starts training your volunteers of what time they’d have to get there to be able to do multiple things. It kind of creates that buffer of a tension point in the future and being able to look look in advance to say, hey, let me let me work some of these issues out before we get there.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. um Kind of related to that, I feel like this is the year of like the three service questions, third service questions. Like I’ve had so many people in this last year reach out to me. I’ve written, I think three or four blog posts, probably 10,000 words on different stuff I’ve learned um about this because it’s like just keeps coming up. Like even today, literally today, I got an email about it this morning.

Rich Birch — So talk me through what what you’ve done at Palmetto Pointe around identifying when we pull the trigger for more services. Is that what mix of that is like opportunistic—we’re creating new space—or it’s reactive, like which of how much of it’s proactive, reactive? And how do you, you know, your church is growing, you’re growing quickly. How do you, how do you keep a far enough ahead? Cause you can’t just decide, Hey, we’re going to do new services. You got to do planning to make it all happen. Talk us through what’s that look like? How are you kind of the, how, how do we know how to identify when we pull the trigger? That sort of thing. Talk us through what that looks like.

Jamie Barfield — Yeah, reactive is terrible. I’ve done it twice. Reactive to, oh no, you know the parking lot’s full. Let’s plan a second service. You know, hat’s terribly difficult. You know, the proactive approach of, I see growth, here goes what, you know, we’re already talking about Easter next year, okay? Here goes how many people are gonna show up. How many services do we need for Easter? And then how much did we grow last year for Easter? So if those people come back, what can they expect the next week?

Jamie Barfield — And so for me, it becomes, opportunistic, yes. Launching multiple services are going to help your church grow. But as you’re launching multiple services, the growth versus the attrition, how is this going to wear your team out? Is this going to wear your staff out? Is this going to wear your band out or your kids’ ministry workers out? And that balance of, okay, at what point do you press forward and what at what point do you pump the gas or pump the brakes?

Jamie Barfield — And so I would just say for us, what we learned through this journey is, you know we want to make sure that when we launch into a another service that there’s a core group of people that are going to be a part of that service. I need you to I need you to say for nine months you’re going to be a part of this service and this is your thing.

Jamie Barfield — And so when we launch into another service, we’re going to make sure that this group of people wants to be there, and this is their church and their service. And then for us, we’re going to make sure that we have a completely different staffed kids’ ministry, completely different group, so we’re not wearing out the already wore-out volunteers of kids’ ministry.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Jamie Barfield — And depending on the time slot, we’ve we’ve tried three different time slots for our third service, but depending on the time slot we choose, it potentially may be a completely different band as well. Maybe the same worship leader, but a completely different band. Because those are the really the two areas, kids ministry and band and the staff. Those are the three areas that are really going to wear you out with multiple services.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. That’s some really clear thinking there around that. Really appreciate that. You know, at 31%, if you continue to grow, I know you know this, you know, that’s like just less than two and a half years, you’ll end up doubling.

Jamie Barfield — Right.

Rich Birch — So you’ll be a church of 5,000 if you continue at this rate.

Jamie Barfield — Crazy.

Rich Birch — And that that becomes difficult to stay in front of. You know, I’ve led in churches that are growing at that rate. And it’s it’s hard to to keep the skis out in front, you know, keep things moving in the right direction.

Rich Birch — Let’s pivot in a totally different direction. I want to take advantage of the fact that you’re a district overseer, in your movement. From your perspective, from your vantage point, what are you seeing across the church these days as it comes to growth and and challenges? And kind of what are you learning as you’re in that kind of coach seat?

Rich Birch — I’m taking advantage of the fact that you’re coaching other leaders.

Jamie Barfield — I actually love that you asked me this question because I was talking with a guy yesterday, and we were talking about how smaller churches specifically, those pastors are really struggling with grasping what their expectations of congregants are, and what the congregants’ expectations of the church should be.

Jamie Barfield — We as small you know smaller church pastors specifically, but we expect them to show up and to give and to serve and to connect, but they don’t have those same expectations on their life. So 30, 40 years ago, those were the expectations of a church attender.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jamie Barfield — Now they’re not.

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Jamie Barfield — And so we have these unrealistic expectations that are creating frustrations from the pulpit to the pew. And I think it’s it’s creating this disconnect, or or honestly, I’ve seen some pastors even preach maybe very angry towards their congregation because of the unrealistic expectations placed upon those people. And so I would say maybe just to the smaller church pastor, which again is 80% of America, you know…

Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. Yep.

Jamie Barfield — …those those guys listening to this, maybe be more understanding of how life has changed in the last 30 or 40 years. I’m not saying lower our standards of righteousness or scriptural truth, but understand that travel ball is a thing and it’s always going to be a thing. And you know, school plays and you know, families going on vacation.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jamie Barfield — Man, we celebrate when families go on vacation. I’m not mad at you for taking a vacation because I want a vacation, you know?

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jamie Barfield — And so we celebrate when families go on vacation. So just creating realistic expectations for the congregation rather than what the, what the expectations were 30 or 40 years ago.

Rich Birch — That’s good. I like that. You know understanding where people are are today and not you know not overburdening them with ah a previous model. I think that’s a really good word for sure. How can we think about that same pastor that maybe sees that frustration and and takes the, you know, the pastoral word of like, yes, I’m not going to exacerbate my people, but I want to help clearly articulate. I kind of want to point to a brighter future for them.

Jamie Barfield — For sure.

Rich Birch — How do I what what would you suggest to them? How do you how should we do that?

Jamie Barfield — Well, first off, I would say one of the things that I see giving life to pastors is them connecting with other pastors.

Rich Birch — So true.

Jamie Barfield — I would just encourage a pastor watching this to make sure that he has or she has somebody in their life that’s outside of the bubble of their own church that may be going through something similar to their to what they’re going through.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Jamie Barfield — And I just think pastors encouraging pastors. We’re on the same team. We’re in this together. Pastors, encouraging pastors. I love what you do here where you celebrate ministries and what they’re doing. I just see that giving such life to um to other pastors that are discouraged and frustrated and aggravated. So I would start there. I would say, man, pastors, find another pastor and speak life into them.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Jamie Barfield — Maybe maybe the second thing I would say is you know maybe maybe an encouragement to, you know, to pastors who have wanted to try something new and try something different. Maybe just an encouragement to you know and to to do it, man. Just do it. Just try it.

Rich Birch — Give it a try.

Jamie Barfield — See what happens. Throw spaghetti up against the wall and see what sticks.

Rich Birch — You get a lot of grace from most, I think most of the people in our churches, we have the the negative voice person in our head, the person that like doesn’t love what we do and is like a complainer or whatever, but that’s like a rare minority in most churches.

Jamie Barfield — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Like most of the people in the church are cheering for the pastor, cheering for the leaders…

Jamie Barfield — That’s right.

Rich Birch — …and are like, man, I love that guy. I love that girl. And if you were to say, Hey, I’d love us to try this thing. It’s just a test. Let’s see what happens. Most people would be like, let’s do it, you know, and, and I, you know, that’ll be fine. And if it goes bad, then don’t take yourself too serious and say, well, we tried that. That didn’t work. And that’s okay. um Yeah, that’s good. I love that. That’s a great word for sure.

Jamie Barfield — Yeah. Agree. Agree completely. Agree completely.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Well, just as we’re kind of landing today’s episode, any final words as we think about for people that are listening in about, you know, what you’ve learned through the years? I love the mindset stuff we’ve been talking about and just this whole area of like our our you know our approach to scarcity, how that works. But anything else you’d love us to think about today as we’re hanging up today?

Jamie Barfield — Yeah, yeah um maybe maybe maybe just to um to the guys that are feeling guys and gals that are feeling stuck, um you know maybe maybe short on everything. Lack is a big thing. Here goes here would be my encouragement. Make every Sunday amazing the best you can, but pick one day and throw all of your energy towards that one day.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Jamie Barfield — Maybe it’s Christmas Eve service coming up, or maybe it’s an Easter service or Mother’s Day or, you know, a manufactured big day, ah you know, a back to church Sunday or something of that nature.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Jamie Barfield — Pick a day and throw all of your energy towards that one day. Pick a person and start investing in a person. You may not be able to do a leadership development process, but pick a person and start investing your life into that person.

Rich Birch — Dude, that’s so good.

Jamie Barfield — Pick one event in the community and just show up for it. Just you know wear a church shirt and show up for the event and shake hands and hug necks and tell everybody, hey, you know. Pick one area of ministry and you know you know go go to your kids’ ministry and say, how can I make this better? You don’t have to fix it all right now.

Rich Birch — That’s so good.

Jamie Barfield — You don’t have to you don’t have to be great at everything right now. You don’t have to have the most amazing, you know, Mother’s Day yet. But man, you can find one thing and just start focusing on something. And I think this is where that mindset of there’s more out there. I’m going to focus on something and make this one thing that God has put in my hand. I’m going to make this thing better.

Rich Birch — Dude, that is such good advice. You know, don’t drown in the all the things you wish you could do. Pick one thing and just do it. I love that.

Jamie Barfield — Pick one thing and do it.

Rich Birch — A friend of mine was a church planter and i was like, I think it was either the first or second Easter they did they went all in on the like Easter egg drop, which I know lots of people have done. But it was a smash success for them. They, you know, it was like five times their normal attendance. It was fantastic. The local news showed up. It was, and it gave, man, it breathed energy into the church for months.

Jamie Barfield — Yes. Yes.

Rich Birch — Like they lived off of that because it was like, hey, that was a win. Yeah, that’s, that’s so good. Well, this has been a great conversation today.

Rich Birch — I love talking to church planters. You know, I was recently with a leader of a church. We were walking around his facility and their buildings about 250,000 square feet, giant building. And he was talking about himself as a church planter. He was like, you know, referring to that.

Rich Birch — And and I joked with him. I said, well, at what point do you stop being a church planter? Like when you, you know, when you you just are doing a $20 million dollars building or whatever, I think, you know, somewhere along the line. But he’s like, no, once a church planter, always a church planter. We’re always, ah you know, the same thing. So I’ve really appreciated this similar conversation today.

Jamie Barfield — That’s exactly right.

Rich Birch — Jamie, if people want to track with you or track with the church, where do we want to send them online?

Jamie Barfield — Yeah, palmettopointechurch.com, it’s all over social media.

Rich Birch — Perfect.

Jamie Barfield — pastorjamieb, all of all of the social media handles are that. Love to connect with them…

Rich Birch — That’s great.

Jamie Barfield — …palmettopointechurch.com, I’d love to connect.

Rich Birch — That’s great. Thanks so much, Jamie. Really appreciate you being here today, sir.

Jamie Barfield — Thank you so much for the opportunity.

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with John Sellers, Executive Pastor of Locations and a location pastor at Journey Church in Central Florida. Journey is one of the fastest-growing churches in the country, with a thriving online community, three campuses, and a fourth location on the way.

Is your church struggling to help new guests take meaningful next steps? Wondering how to move people from attending on Sunday to fully engaging in community and serving? Tune in as John shares how Journey Church creates clear pathways for connection, builds consistency into its systems, and celebrates every step of faith along the way.

To learn more about Journey Church, visit journeyconnect.org or follow @journeyconnect on Instagram. Download their New Here 6-Step Follow-Up Workflow here.

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: Risepointe

Do you feel like your church’s or school’s facility could be preventing growth? Are you frustrated or possibly overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your building becoming obstacles in the path of expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt that you could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the community’s needs?

Well, the team over at Risepointe can help! As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead you to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Your mission should not be held back by your building. Their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to incorporate creative design solutions to help move YOUR mission forward.

Check them out at risepointe.com/unseminary and while you’re there, schedule a FREE call to explore possibilities for your needs, vision and future…Risepointe believes that God still uses spaces…and they’re here to help.

Rich Birch — Well, hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in and you’re gonna be rewarded for that because today we’ve got a great conversation. I know this is the kind of thing, in fact, I know this is helpful because I feel like every other day I get people asking about this area and this is the kind of thing that many of us can do just a much better job on and we’ve got really an expert on the line today to help us with. We’ve got John Sellers. He is Executive Pastor of Locations and is also a location pastor at Journey Church which has repeatedly been one of the fastest growing churches in the country. If I’m counting correctly, they’ve got three locations in Florida and a fourth in the works, plus church online. They exist to help people connect with Christ, community, and their calling.

Rich Birch — Super excited to have you on the the show today, John. Thanks for being here.

John Sellers — Thank you, Rich. I’m excited ah to be on. God’s been moving here and we’re just so thankful for you. I know we’re one of those churches that I don’t feel like we do anything unique or novel. Like we just learn from other people and learn from other resources.

John Sellers — And your resources have been a part of our story. And so one of one of your books, in fact, over the last couple of years about creating an inviting culture at your church has been one of the one of the best resources we’ve had in the last couple of years.

Rich Birch — That’s super kind.

John Sellers — And so we’re one of those churches that’s benefited from you.

Rich Birch — Wow. You and my mom read my book. I appreciate that.

John Sellers — Yes, yes.

Rich Birch — No, that’s good. I really appreciate that. Super kind of you to say. That’s that’s humbling, frankly, for you to say that. And so why don’t you kind of tell us a little bit about the church? Kind of tell us about Journey. Give us a sense. Talk about your role. Kind of set the table for us.

John Sellers — Yes, you’ve, you said it pretty well. We’re in central Florida. We’re a little ways north of Orlando. So we’re in a ah county called Volusia County, which is the same county that has Daytona Beach in it.

Rich Birch — Oh, nice.

John Sellers — And, uh, our area is a lot of kind of blue collar people. They’re just incredible, um, men and women of God. There’s incredible men and women who are moving here. Um, and they’re the kind of people that would just give you the shirt off their back. They’re ready to serve. They’re ready to be engaged, ah to make a difference in the world around them.

John Sellers — And so for us, we’re not in a big metropolitan area. So sometimes when we hear from other churches that are in big, you know, massive cities, sometimes it’s hard to relate to how that translates into small towns like we’re at, and medium sized cities. And so for us, what’s been helpful is podcasts like these, where I hear the principles I’ve read in a book at a church that’s maybe normal size or a little bit smaller or more kind of a normal size city. And so that’s kind of us.

John Sellers — We’ve been multi-site for about 10 years…

Rich Birch — Great.

John Sellers — …and we’re continuing to see God kind of multiply our ministry. And ah yeah, that’s about it for for where we’re at.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. What’s your, ah I know this is, this is germane because of what we’re talking about today. Give us a sense of the kind of growth trajectory of the church. I know you’re a humble guy, so you’re not going to be like, oh, this, is we’ve grown by this and this and this.

John Sellers — Yeah.

Rich Birch — But kind of tell us a little bit of that story. That’ll help set the table a little bit for where we’re going.

John Sellers — So we were um kind of a traditional, you know, First Baptist Church of Orange City. And our lead pastor came a little over 20 years ago, and he brought just kind of a church planting mentality with him and really a new vision, a new direction for the church.

John Sellers — And so I would say our growth has been really just steady growth over those 20 years. And really in the last five to six, we’ve seen some incredible back-to-back years of double-digit growth, you know, in the, you know, 10 to 15% growth year over year.

Rich Birch — Love that.

John Sellers — And it’s just been kind of a steady year after year, making slow, small progress is the way I would describe it.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good.

So it has not been one of those overnight, hey, we went from a hundred people to 10,000 or anything like that.

Rich Birch — Yes.

John Sellers — It’s just been a slow go every year. How do we get better? How do we continue to be a church that reaches people right here in our community?

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. And that’s actually really common. I’m working on a book right now about breaking the 2000 barrier. And typically, actually, one of the interesting benchmarks is when a church breaks the 2000 barrier, actually, it’s common the most common thing is for the lead pastor to have been there for 15 years. And so…

John Sellers — Wow.

Rich Birch — You know, I think oftentimes people think like, oh, you like you say, it’s like, oh, it’s just something happens. You know, those stories because they’re unique, you know, they’re…

John Sellers — Yes.

Rich Birch — And so, you know, that this is is great to kind of dig into some of, you know, like you say, the more normal…

John Sellers — Yes.

Rich Birch — …you know, obviously what God’s doing is not totally normal, but but we’re we want to learn from it.

Rich Birch — So one of the things that we all struggle with is this idea of getting people to take next steps and plugging into connection, get you know, how do we move new here guests, get them to actually make, um you know, some sort of connection to the church. From your vantage point, why is that hard for for so many churches or maybe so many guests ah to actually make those steps?

John Sellers — Yes, I think there’s a lot of factors that go into that. I think the problem we keep running into or have run into over the years is we have so many new people walking through the doors and many times we find, hey, they kind of get stuck in this. They’ll visit once or twice, maybe three times. We don’t see them again. And we saw that gap of how do we connect those that walk in the doors and help them take that step um to really engage for the long haul.

John Sellers — And so I think some of it, what I’ve found is it can be multifaceted. Like I think sometimes as people who’ve been in the church for maybe many years, we forget what it’s like walking through the through the doors of a church.

Rich Birch — Yes. It’s true.

John Sellers — And so we have to constantly, as leaders, keep going back to ah what is that like?

John Sellers — And so the way we talk about it a lot at Journey Church is when someone walks through the doors um of your church, it means God is working in their life. The Holy Spirit is doing something to create a desire for them.

Rich Birch — So true.

John Sellers — And what that means is I think anytime God leads people to take any kind of step, um the enemy and the flesh and sin ah wants to creep in and use anything as a distraction to kind of keep them from taking the next step.

John Sellers — And so what I found sometimes that ah where that can happen is um when when people walk in the fear of, am I accepted? The fear of, you know, what do I do?

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

John Sellers — There’s not a, you know, clarity on what they’re wanting me to do. And so for us, what we’ve prayed about and what we try to hone in on is we want to do everything in our power to recognize that those who walk through the door, God has led them to make that step, that it’s a big step. And we want to do everything we can to remove the barriers.

John Sellers — And so how we do that, I think, is greater clarity. Like what steps do we want them to take? And how do we make it as clear as we absolutely can can, as clear as possible…

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

John Sellers — …for them to know when and how to take that step?

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

John Sellers — And then beyond that, what we found is is a lot of times the question people are asking when they’re new is, do I belong here? Like, am I a fit here? So no matter what those steps are, what we found is it it needs to be relational. And you have to put some of those people on your team that are gifted with hospitality, with making somebody who’s brand new feel like they’re welcome and at home. And try to put them in those on those teams and on those next steps areas to help with that process. Because a lot of times people are asking the question, like, I don’t know if I’m a fit here. I don’t know if they want me here.

Rich Birch — Right.

John Sellers — And so we have to go up above and beyond to to kind of help them know they’re welcome. We’ve thought of you. We’ve prayed for you. And here’s that very next step that we want you to take.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good.

John Sellers — Here’s it’s as clear as day for you.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I know, and we’re going to get into this, but I often say to churches that I do coaching with, I’m like, you cannot make this too clear. Like you’ve got to keep, we’ve got to work on how do we, what is the step we need people to take? How do we, how do we make it more obvious? How do we make it more clear? It’s literally a bottomless pit of like, we just got to keep making it.

John Sellers — Yes.

Rich Birch — And and I think it’s true. One of the things I’ve noticed in my own, so, you know, I’m in, you know, whatever my third, fourth decade of leading now, I guess. And which is weird to say, but the um I do think people have changed. I think there was a time when I first started where I think people showed up at church and they weren’t really sure why they were there.

John Sellers — Yep.

Rich Birch — But I think that has shifted over time as we’ve become a more and more unchurched. All of our churches, all our communities are more unchurched today than they were 20 years ago. People don’t just stumble into a church and they’re not sure why they’re there. They’re showing up looking for something. They’re they’re asking questions when they arrive and we want to meet them with that.

Rich Birch — So when someone visits for the first time, actually talk us through that. What are the first couple weeks look like? What is that experience like? How do you help move them from I arrived and I’ve I maybe have got some fear. I’m asking, do I belong here? What are some of those kind of meaning, the first steps you you you lead them through to get them towards meaningful connection?

John Sellers — So at our church, every location has a tent. It’s a new here tent. And so the first step that we’re communicating, the the clear step on that first or second week is, man, stop by the tent. Like I know that’s a big step and we have to remind our serve team and behind the curtain, that seems simple to us, but like to a new person at a church, even going to a tent or making themselves known by filling out a Connect Card, even if it’s digital, like that’s a big step for somebody.

Rich Birch — Right.

John Sellers — And so a lot of our communication is go to the tent. We’d love to meet you. We’ve got a gift card for you just to celebrate the step of faith you took to be here today. And so once they take that step, um it starts us being able to follow up you know through text messages, emails, phone calls, and really encouraging them to step into our Next Steps class. And so when they step into our Next Steps class, one of the things we’re even constantly trying to think through what we call it, because class…

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.

John Sellers — …probably isn’t the best ah way to describe it, and we’re actually revamping it right now.

Rich Birch — Yes.

John Sellers — But for us, even that Next Steps class is a round table, it’s relational, it’s getting them around our Next Steps team that wants to hear their story. You know, what brought you through the doors, wants to begin to hear you know about maybe what’s on their heart, where are they at, what’s their next faith step?

John Sellers — And so those are are the first couple of weeks. If we can encourage them to stop by the tent, that allows us to stay in contact with them relationally. And then the next step would be, man, go to one of our next steps classes after a service.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Can we pull apart a bit of the detail there?

John Sellers — Sure.

Rich Birch — Just because I know people are wondering this because I get these questions. So it sounds like when you arrive at the New Year tent, there’s a gift card there. Where’s that gift card for? What is that and what is the value of that?

John Sellers — Yeah.

Rich Birch — What do you what do you, and why a gift card? Talk to us about that.

John Sellers — Yes. So for now we’ve, and we’ve experimented, we’ll change, we’ll change this up like constantly. But right now it’s for a local coffee shop.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.

John Sellers — And it’s, it’s literally a $5 gift card.

Rich Birch — Yep.

John Sellers — It’s just a thank you to say, thank you for coming. It’s it’s a little gift bag. It’s got information about our church, obviously. And um it’s just a step to the way we phrase it is we know it’s a big step of faith you took to be here today.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

John Sellers — And so we just want to celebrate…

Rich Birch — Yeah, I want to celebrate that.

John Sellers — …the fact that you have made it in the room.

Rich Birch — Oh, I like that.

John Sellers — And so that that’s what it is. Five dollars. On big events. We’ll do, you know, a Journey Church cup…

Rich Birch — Right. Christmas or something like that.

…and make it a little more, you know, more substantial.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

John Sellers — But it’s just a five dollar gift card to a local coffee shop.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. And I love the, you know, the the thinking behind that, friends that are listening in, is sometimes when I see churches do, they’ll be like, hey, if you want to get connected, or if you if you’ve got interested about your next steps, or if you’re wondering where to go, drop by the the tent in the you know outside. People are not asking that question when they first come.

John Sellers — Yes.

Rich Birch — So we’ve we’ve we’ve got to take a celebratory ah step. And I like what you’re saying. I love that language of like, we want to celebrate the faith step by being here today. And we want to give you a gift in exchange for that. People will do that for a $5 gift card. They’ll or a you know or you know coffee mug or whatever. You know. That’s good.

Rich Birch — And then the other thing that caught my attention, you said, was you said and we follow up with texts and emails.

John Sellers — Yes.

Rich Birch — Talk about how, you know, how many of that, what’s that communication process look like? This is another area where I see churches drop the ball all the time.

John Sellers — Sure. It’s a variety. There’s a workflow that we use through our database system planning center…

Rich Birch — Yep.

John Sellers — …that is owned by our weekend experience, ah you know, team members. But basically it starts with an email from our lead pastor with a short video…

Rich Birch — Yep.

John Sellers — …for them to watch a message directly from him. It includes a text message or phone call from the location pastors within two weeks. It includes other text messages and emails. So it lasts about six weeks…

Rich Birch — Yep.

John Sellers — …and it’s more information about how to take steps at our church.

Rich Birch — Yep.

John Sellers — And so some of its vision, a lot of it is is geared towards stepping into the Next Steps class. But yes, it’s multiple and it’s a variety and it’s over the span of six weeks.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.

John Sellers — And then we even have, you know, workflows built out that, you know, if somebody goes through that six week process without taking a next step, that periodically we’ll check back in with them just to see how we can serve them.

Rich Birch — Now, I’m just because I know how this goes, would you be willing to share like a one pager that kind of explains what those six weeks are? Do you have that? Even just a screen capture of the workflows?

John Sellers — Sure, sure.

Rich Birch — Would you be open to that?

John Sellers — I can put that together for you. Yeah.

Rich Birch — Because what I know will happen is this is going to go out and then people are going to ask you, you’re going to get flooded with email.

John Sellers — Yes.

Rich Birch — So I’ll save you that step. You can look at the show notes below. We’ll we’ll link to that. People are very are interested in that, ah you know, that step for sure. So um that’s super helpful. Also love, how often does the next steps class? Talk us through…

John Sellers — Sure.

Rich Birch — …what does that look like? How often does that happen? Give us a sense of what goes on in that.

John Sellers — I would say this has been one of the one of the biggest, it seems like a small tweak for us, but it’s been a game changer in kind of back to that question, how do you overcome the barrier of helping people get connected consistently, is we’ve just made it a consistent month-to-month process.

John Sellers — So week one, weekend one is step one, no matter what weekend it is, there’s maybe a couple of weeks out of the year, you know, where we it may shift it a week, but week one is next steps one. That’s where you connect to, you hear more about our vision as a church. You can, learn about the gospel, like we’ll share the gospel, give people a chance to receive Christ, sign up to be baptized.

Rich Birch — Yep.

John Sellers — Step two is join a team. So you’re discovering how God’s wired you and what teams are on your location that you can plug in.

John Sellers — Week three is baptisms across all of our location. And so if you went to step one, accepted Christ, you’ve never been baptized and you want to be baptized that month – every location, every single month on the third weekend.

John Sellers — And then the fourth week is um typically there’s no class or any step that week other than that’s the week that most of our new team members on our serve team will serve for the first time or shadow for the first time.

John Sellers — And so we want to celebrate them that morning. We want to make sure to connect them relationally as they join the team. And so we just do that every single month.

Rich Birch — So good.

John Sellers — And so it just it gives in those next steps classes happen after every service on every location.

Rich Birch — Wow.

John Sellers — Those were some of those little tweaks for us that seem small, but taking that step has actually allowed more and more people to take the step when they’re ready, when God moves in their life.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I want to underline that. That is best practice. We’ve heard something similar like that in lots of churches, similarly modeled on Church of the Highlands Growth Track. Some of the lessons that they’ve learned around the consistency is a huge issue for sure.

Rich Birch — Can you jump in at any one of those? Or do you, so like are all the people that are here this month, they’re going to be invited to the first step or can they jump in on any step?

John Sellers — They can jump in on on any step.

Rich Birch — Wow.

John Sellers — And so the the communication to the new person is, man, here’s the…

Rich Birch — Next weekend.

John Sellers — …yep, here’s next weekend or today. Like if they’re in the service today, right after service…

Rich Birch — Wow.

John Sellers — …walk into the into the next steps room. We’ve got free food for you, lunch if it’s lunchtime. You know, we’ve got Journey Kids going on. So your kids will be taken care of.

John Sellers — And so we try to make that as easy as possible, whether it’s that day or, you know, sometimes it’s six months later after they visited for the first time. But we want to always have it available for when God moves and they’re ready.

Rich Birch — That, John, that’s a gift where you just gave to people here. Like this, friends, I’ve joked in other contexts: boring stuff grows churches. And this is an example of one of those.

John Sellers — Yes.

Rich Birch — Putting together a class like that, that is going to go every single weekend, week-in, week-out, like, man, the the kind of the amount of momentum that builds for a church like Journey is, is incredible. That’s, that’s amazing.

Rich Birch — So when you think about weekends, you know, you, what moments in a weekend have you found is like the most effective for both lowering fear and inviting that next step? Are there times during the service or are there moments that you’re saying like, Hey, we want to make sure that we’re communicating clearly, doing what we need to do to make sure that we’re, we’re helping people take these steps.

John Sellers — Yes. For us, obviously there can be fluctuation and variation week to week, but for us, most weekends after the very first worship song is just a quick welcome moment.

John Sellers — And that welcome moment is specifically for new or newer people. And so it’s just a chance to say thank you for being here. We highlight the tent. Um, we usually, we’ve started using language that I don’t know how difficult it was to get in the room. I don’t know how smooth it’s gone, but you made it. That’s a big deal. You’ve made it in the room.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I like that. I really like that.

John Sellers — And we’ve been praying for you. Man, we’ve been expecting you. We just want to celebrate you. So, you know, you pass it on the way in, but if you haven’t had a chance to stop there on the way out, it’ll take, you know, less than a minute. Just stop by, let us meet you real quick and give you that gift. Talk about the gift card.

John Sellers — And then usually that will be, if it’s a next steps class weekend, that will mention something there because we’ve already got their attention. But on those weekends, we will also allow that to be the very last thing that we say. And so if next steps class is that day, as you leave, we make it as clear as possible. People with signs. I mean, we we don’t want them to miss it. That remember next steps is today. Like we mentioned earlier in service, we’d love to have you, you know, step into next steps class.

John Sellers — And so kind of that welcome moment. And at the very end is the norm. And then periodically our lead pastor will mention it in his sermon time, like in his, in his main message.

Rich Birch — Right.

John Sellers — And sometimes we’ll strategically use a video, you know, how someone took a step into that class and and the difference it’s made. But I would say most weekends is that welcome moment in the very end.

Rich Birch — Yeah, kind of the top and the end to kind of cap the service with that. I love that. I really like the language that you’re using there. I think I’m going to steal that. I love this idea of like, man, I don’t know what it took for you to get here. Man, you did an incredible thing. Like it’s it’s validating to people. You did the right thing by being here today.

John Sellers — Yes.

Rich Birch — And man, like God is already at work in your life. Like, and you may not say it like that, but that’s what we believe.

John Sellers — Yep.

Rich Birch — Like the fact that they’ve just showed up, man, we don’t want to miss that. Like, I often think of particularly when we deal with a lot of unchurched people who don’t normally attend church, like that first step, man, is a giant step.

John Sellers — It’s a big deal.

Rich Birch — Like that they’re changing something huge in their area. That’s incredible.

John Sellers — And and I think that’s the thing that’s so easy to forget is like, especially if you follow Jesus for years…

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah.

John Sellers — …you know, you forget what that experience is like and what God’s doing.

John Sellers — I had someone explain this to me yesterday. He’s been at our church for a number of years now. And when he came in, he was absolutely broken. And he’s like, I just don’t want you guys to forget, like the people who walk through your doors on Sunday, he’s like, I was ready to end my life.

Rich Birch — Wow.

John Sellers — And I was given one last shot and I walked through the doors. And the conversation I had in the parking lot. And the conversation I had and then the message and how God used it. And I just told him, I was like, thank you for sharing that because I don’t ever want to lose that perspective.

Rich Birch — A hundred percent.

John Sellers — I don’t ever want to lose what a big deal it is when somebody who’s unchurched or far from God or doesn’t know the Lord takes that step just to walk through the doors on a Sunday or a Saturday night. It’s a big deal.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Not that people need more vision, but i’m going to layer on a similar story I had two weeks ago with a guy. And he was reflecting back on his experience when he first came. This is at our church. And he’s like, ah he’s a man’s man, drives a truck, all this kind of stuff. And he’s an incredible young, incredible guy. And God’s done amazing thing in his life in the last couple of years. And he was talking about the very first weekend.

Rich Birch — And he said, you know, he said, when I showed up, pulled up in my pickup truck and there was some guy out front with the Mickey Mouse hands where like so many churches, you know, they got the guys with signs and Mickey Mouse hands and come and park here and all that. And he said, I remember I pulled into a spot where they told me to park and I sat there for like a few minutes and just watched people come in. Because I just didn’t know, like, are these, and it gets back to your belong thing. Who are these people? Like, are these, and he said, I saw a few people that were like, okay, like they’re, you know, they’re dressed normal. I guess I didn’t have to wear a suit. I guess it really is okay.

Rich Birch — And, and I thought, wow, like, I would have, the way this guy presents himself, I would have never thought that like he would have struggled with like, oh, I don’t know if I can go in. I don’t know if I can go in. But man, people come with that, that kind of anxiety when they arrive for the first time. We can’t lose that.

Rich Birch — Let’s talk about baptism specifically.

John Sellers — Sure.

Rich Birch — One of the things I want to kind of double click on is kind of focus in on that. I know many of us want to see people take that step. It’s an important step, obviously, in their spiritual journey. It also helps us understand kind of what’s happening in our church. How have you found kind of the right way to inject the baptism experience? It’s obviously step three. It’s a big part of the the the puzzle. But how do you build towards those moments? What does that look like? Kind of talk to us about how baptism fits into this.

John Sellers — Sure. It’s it’s a big deal for you know for us as well. And um it’s been one of those things on our, as we think about new people, how do we continue to make this step available? It’s part of the command of what Jesus gave the church was to make disciples and baptize them.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Yes.

John Sellers — And so um as we were thinking about that, that’s part of offering it every single month. The direct feeder of that, if you want to think about it behind the curtain, is Next Steps Class Step One. And so that’s where they’ll indicate that they’re interested or that they need to be baptized or want to be baptized.

John Sellers — And then we have a volunteer team ah that follows up with them as well, just kind of hearing their story. Sometimes there’s gospel conversations you can have in those relationships there, just sharing the gospel you know with them.

John Sellers — Sometimes that’s where they come to Christ is their they’re interested in this baptism thing. They don’t know what it’s all about. And so they’ll follow up, get their story, kind of listen to them, connect with them.

John Sellers — And then the way that we do it right now is the baptisms are just a part of our worship moments. So as the band is singing, um you know, we use iMag up on the screen real close up in the baptistry. And, um you know, those are moments where they have a baptism shirt. So they’ll come that day, meet with the baptism team that’s already followed up with them. And that team just walks them through relationally through the whole day with pictures, kind of celebrating that. We encourage them to bring their family on those weekends.

John Sellers — And so That’s probably the main kind of um stream for us…

Rich Birch — Yep.

John Sellers — …is we use that as our main on-ramp every single month, every single location we offer it.

John Sellers — Now that’s to say, I know this will be encouraging to to some people out there. That doesn’t mean that there’s baptisms happening every service on every location. We offer it every single month, but depending on the size of the location and the congregation there, it doesn’t mean that that’s happening in every every campus, every service, every single month. But a lot of months there are because we offer it and we have that on-ramp.

John Sellers — And then for us, we do two strategic events a year…

Rich Birch — Okay, yeah.

John Sellers — …where that step is incorporated into our worship services and people can take the step to receive Christ and be baptized on the very same day in the very same service. And so those two for us is the weekend after Easter,

Rich Birch — Okay.

John Sellers — And then we do a special event. It’s our only event that we do on a weekend that’s all church. So all locations in one place. And it’s actually coming up in October.

Rich Birch — Okay.

John Sellers — The reason we strategically placed it there is many times for us. I don’t know about other parts of the country or the world…

Rich Birch — Yes.

John Sellers — …but ah right here in central Florida, October, November is like dead season for for us as a church.

Rich Birch — OK, right.

John Sellers — We would see attendance dip and all these different things. And so we just prayed through what what can we do to leverage this time to reach more people? And so we do that as an all church event. It’s outdoor. We call it church at the park. And we share the gospel, encourage people to invite their friends and family and they can be baptized on that day.

John Sellers — So we’ve done that kind of rhythm for two years in a row.

Rich Birch — Yep.

John Sellers — And we’ve had over, so our church averages a little over 2000 people in person. It’s continuing to to grow. In the last two years, both years, we’ve had over 400 people take the step of baptism.

Rich Birch — Wow. Praise God.

John Sellers — And those are just students and adults. So we’re Baptist and we we don’t baptize infants.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.

John Sellers — And so that’s just adults and students that are taking this the step of baptism.

Rich Birch — Wow.

John Sellers — And this last year, it’s felt like even beyond what we would ever expect, like 400, over 450 people across the the year.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing. Praise God. That’s incredible.

John Sellers — So it just feels like God has breathed on that um in a way that we ah we didn’t expect.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

John Sellers — So…

Rich Birch — I love I love that. So i I want to come back to those two times a year in in a second, but I just, I want to underline just so I understand in the rest of the year on that week three. So the anticipation that that’s week three, you’re doing kind of baptism Sunday every month during the year, except for in these two big months months of the year. That’s what, that’s what’s happening there. And again, not necessarily every campus, every service, but that’s kind of the kind of cadence is pushing towards that.

John Sellers — Yeah. And every campus, every service is offering it. It’s just a matter of how many people sign up for that for that month.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Okay.

John Sellers — So the expectation is, man, Lord willing, if God moves, we’ve prepared the way and we’re ready. If someone in every, you know, who attends every service, every location is ready to take that step.

Rich Birch — I love that. That’s so good. And the, the do you, are they doing like a story? Do they give a little bit of their testimony? Does, how does that work? I’ve seen what you’re talking about with like during the worship experience. I get that, but is there some part of it where we get to hear from them or no? Obviously the baptism team hears from them.

John Sellers — So the way the way we’re currently doing it, we we do not hear their story. So we don’t, um there was a time, it’s funny to how those iterations have happened. When I first came to our church, we had every person who was going to be baptized film a video…

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

John Sellers — …with their story that would play. And then we’ve reached times where they would share, ah you know, in the moment.

Rich Birch — Yes.

John Sellers — Then there was times where the pastor would share. What we’re currently doing…

Rich Birch — Yeah.

John Sellers — (And I’m not saying this this may not change.)

Rich Birch — Yes. No, that’s good.

John Sellers — …is what we’re currently doing is they share the story with the baptism team, sometimes with the location pastor. And in that moment, we’re letting them know in the welcome moment, what’s about to happen. And, you know, we may share some specifics there. Like we had some, some middle school girls and it was almost their entire small group was being baptized on the same day. So in the welcome, we said, what you’re going to see is these are, these are middle school girls that have been taking steps of faith and bringing their friends.

Rich Birch — Okay.

John Sellers — And they’re about to get baptized. But in the moment, it’s during worship, people are celebrating, but we’re not stopping to share every single story.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

John Sellers — And in fact, kind of back to the barriers, that’s been one of the barriers that we’ve and we’ve encountered, where people aren’t ready to take the step of baptism because they’re afraid they’re going to be put on the spot to talk in front of hundreds of people or something like that.

John Sellers — So, but that’s currently how we’re doing it.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Okay. And then let’s talk about these two times a year, the week after Easter and October, I get a sense of why you would do those. Then what are you doing differently to kind of prepare people to move towards that? Obviously, you know, apart, you know, I gotta be careful on all this stuff. I know that like the Lord is moving. I understand that. I get that.

John Sellers — Sure.

Rich Birch — There’s a part of this we can’t, we’re not manufacturing. I get that. But there must be some communication process we’re doing to kind of give people a heads up. Talk us through what that looks like leading up to those kind of big baptism days.

John Sellers — Yeah, for the for the one after Easter, there’s not a lot in regard to communication to people who would be taking the step. It’s more behind the curtain preparation for our teams.

Rich Birch — Okay.

John Sellers — Obviously, the baptism team, the weekend experience and next steps teams, like they’re preparing for, you know, what could be 10, 20, 30, or even over a hundred, depending on the size of the location.

Rich Birch — Right.

John Sellers — And so they’re making sure they have enough. We do baptism shirts in all the different sizes on those days. We’ll even have all kinds of shorts available for people.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Spontaneous. Yep.

John Sellers — We’ll have towels, all those kinds of things. They’ve got the whole system planned. But as far as that person who’s new to our church and the anticipation is they came on Easter. And the step at Easter is: join us next week. It’s a big, weekend. And we are following up that week from every new person from Easter, and probably the six weeks before Easter, just encouraging them to be there on that day with their families.

John Sellers — And so a lot of it’s more behind the curtain and in that sense. So it feels like though, like it does feel like I get the question all the time, especially the last two years from our church members of like, man, did you have all those people pre-planned and ready to to go?

Rich Birch — Right.

John Sellers — And um And I’m like, no, like on the day, it literally feels like you’ve created the altar…

Rich Birch — Wow.

John Sellers — …and you’re praying, Lord, let your fire fall. Like we we don’t, it’s a step of faith, but God’s been faithful to do it.

Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yeah.

John Sellers — With the one in the fall, so the one we do in October, we we do kind of our play like we would any bigger reaching event, like like like an Easter, as far as invite cards, marketing, social media, all that kind of stuff. And the idea is bring somebody with you. This is a reaching event in our community and we’re going share the gospel. And it’s the same kind of play as far as um obviously it takes a lot more to to lift off. So it’s an all call for our staff. We bring a lot of our baptism resources to the park. It’s it’s a pretty intense week before and obviously months of planning, kind of getting ready for it. But we kind of run a play as a reaching event for that.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. And is the size of that event, like couple thousand people, ah you know, how big can that thing get before you’re going to have to find somewhere different?

John Sellers — Yeah. That’s what we’re, that’s what we’re at right now. You’re exactly hitting it. Yeah. I mean, it’s we’re taking over a city park and it’s hard to count, right?

Rich Birch — Yes.

John Sellers — I mean, we we take over a community building to do our Journey Kids experience that day and and pack out that building.

Rich Birch — Yes.

John Sellers — But as far, I mean, it’s just a sea of people, like it’s thousands and thousands of people. So I think we’ll we’ll be there soon. So that’s obvious.

Rich Birch — Yes.

John Sellers — One of those things where we keep evaluating, like when’s the time that we may not be able to do this anymore? Should we continue to do it? Are there larger venues?

Rich Birch — Yeah.

John Sellers — But for now, that’s kind of how we’re looking at it.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I was talking to a church a couple of weeks ago, maybe a month ago now, and they do a similar once a year. And they’re like, we’re in the biggest venue that there is. They like they’re like, we’re not sure where to go. And so I said to them, I was like, well, you’ve got to find a bigger venue. Like, like you know, like.

John Sellers — Yeah.

Rich Birch — I don’t know, or move it to a different time of year where you can get outside or, you know, whatever. Obviously that’s a nice time of year. have some friends live in central Florida. That’s a nice time of year. People, it’s like the opposite of up north. Up north they’re like going indoors at that time of year.

John Sellers — Yes.

Rich Birch — But there it’s, everybody’s coming outside.

John Sellers — It’s pleasant.

Rich Birch — You know, the, the, the might be reverse logic if you were, you know, in northern part of the country, you know, do something like that in the spring…

John Sellers — Right.

Rich Birch — …because people want to be outside. So yeah, that’s interesting. Well, there’s obvious there’s an interesting balance here. How do you think about, this might be a bit of a curveball question. How do you think about and lead, we want to motivate people towards baptism. We want them to be like, hey, this is a positive step. We want to cast vision towards that. While at the same time, we don’t want to pressure them. We don’t want them to feel like…

John Sellers — No.

Rich Birch — …they’re being guilted into it. How do you balance that out? What’s that look like? How do we how do we kind of walk with people through that? I know that’s your heart to find that balance, but what what’s that look like for you? How do you think about that internally?

John Sellers — Yeah, I think internally we think of it as we want to do all the work to prepare. So we use that kind of language, that idea that when it takes the Holy Spirit of God to move in someone’s heart in life, to lead them to have a desire to take a faith step. So whether it’s baptism, whether it’s coming to Christ in the first place.

Rich Birch — Right.

John Sellers — And we can’t do that. We can’t manufacture that.

Rich Birch — Yep.

John Sellers — That’s that’s the sovereignty of God. We pray for it like crazy, like we bathe it in prayer…

Rich Birch — Yep.

John Sellers — But we’re going to do all we can that when God does move in someone’s heart that we’ve made it so clear and we’ve prepped for them to take that step that it’s as easy as possible.

John Sellers — But in our language, as we’re walking with those people, if they’re not ready, there’s always next month, right? I mean, there’s always, you know, if it’s not, you’re not ready at this big event. And that’s a common conversation that we have as team members, even our serve team, volunteer team that we have with people is, hey, you know, if you’re not ready today, don’t worry. There’s next month, there’s the month following.

John Sellers — I do try to encourage them to have the conversation, but if the Spirit’s moving in your life, don’t hesitate, like don’t don’t wait.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that’s good.

John Sellers — And so that’s kind of how we handle it. Like I don’t think there’s any kind of set strategy or anything like that that we have in place other than that’s the vision we cast, that’s what we try to encourage our people to have. And so I would say it’s pretty common. Like there’s there’s people when they go through Next Steps class, they’re not ready and it may take six months.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah.

John Sellers — Sometimes they’ll go through a Next Steps class, they don’t wanna do it that month or even the months following. But then one of these big events comes and you see them in the, in the, in the baptistry.

Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, so good.

John Sellers — And so it kind of works differently for everybody, but yeah, I would encourage, don’t put the pressure on, but use the language of man, but when God’s leading and be obedient to what he tells you.

Rich Birch — Yeah, if you’re looking for a practical training on that, friends that are listening in, I’ve actually found it really, this is going to sound like a bit of an old school thing, but find a a couple videos of Billy Graham doing his crusades years ago. And I felt obviously he was so good at that moment of like not letting people off the hook because the Spirit might actually be moving in their life, but also not trying to pressure them.

John Sellers — No.

Rich Birch — It’s not like, Hey, we’re trying to, we’re trying, trying to humanly coerce you to the front. And obviously it’s, it’s a different, it’s a different ask, but I yeah I would, whoever’s doing your teaching or doing that moment, watch a couple Billy Graham’s and kind of pick up on your, you’ll get a sense of, Oh, wow. That’s a good, you know, that’s a kind of a good way to, to kind of find that tension in those things.

Rich Birch — This has been incredible.

John Sellers — That’s really good.

Rich Birch — What I’m, I know, friends that are listening in, John had like a whole other bunch of stuff he wanted to talk about. And I was like, let’s talk about this one thing.

John Sellers — This is awesome.

Rich Birch — So maybe we’ll have you on again in the future sometime if you’re if you’re open to that. But anything else you’d love to say just as we wrap up today’s episode as we close things down?

John Sellers — Yeah, I think I’m just encouraged like to anybody listening that we’re in a unique moment. I know if if other churches are like ours, we’ve had just people showing up. We had the numbers of people that would be like a reaching event, not like an Easter, but like a Christmas, like a big event on just a normal weekend that we did not plan, that God is causing questions.

Rich Birch — Yes.

John Sellers — There’s people coming, asking, you know i had someone come and say, how do I do that thing that you guys do? And I’m like, what thing are you talking about? And he was trying to describe baptism, but he didn’t know the word.

Rich Birch — Yes. Love it.

John Sellers — And he’s like, how do I how do I do this?

Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.

John Sellers — And so my encouragement is, man, in your community where God’s planted you, God is still wanting to use the local church to be the kind of catalyst to bring life change, transformation in people’s lives. And so I would just encourage you to pray through with the giftings God’s given you, the resources God’s given you, even in the next two to three months, what might you need to shift? How can you kind of change your language…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

John Sellers — …even small tweaks to make sure you’re speaking whatever sermon series you’re doing or whatever passage you’re preaching through, that you’re speaking directly to those people that are asking, man, I want to get back in church. Or man, I want to figure out this whole church thing and make sure my family’s coming there. How do you apply those scriptures to their lives and give them a very clear, very specific faith step?

Rich Birch — That’s good.

John Sellers — One of the things that that we did is we weren’t ready for it. We had just kind of um been through our groups onboarding season and, you know, still assimilating people. And now we’ve got all these people showing up and we created just, and God led us to create just a new group environment that’s literally launching this week.

Rich Birch — I love it.

John Sellers — We didn’t plan on it. Right.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

John Sellers — And, ah but it was God.

Rich Birch — What are you doing? I’d love to hear what’s because that’s funny. We’re literally talking about the same thing at our church. What are you guys doing to to to kind of catch these people?

John Sellers — Yeah. Yeah. So we just doing an eight, like a six, I think it’s a six or seven week short term group. And it’s literally just following, you know, it’s not a long commitment.

Rich Birch — Yep.

John Sellers — The language we’re using is we’ve been hearing a lot of your questions. Like we’ve been hearing a lot of you coming and asking, man, what about evil? What about all these things? So we’re actually going to address some of those questions in our weekend services.

Rich Birch — That’s cool.

John Sellers — And there would be this group environment where you can ask those questions and process with other people ah for a short term. And so, that’s what we’ve done. They’re launching this week on every location and there’s people signed up for all of them that we didn’t have planned. It was like God just kind of laid it in our lap.

John Sellers — And so that’s my my challenge to people listening is just thinking that way of, Lord, you’re your Spirit is who has to move for people to take those steps.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

John Sellers — Help me. What can we do as a church to be good shepherds, stewards…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

John Sellers — …of that faith step and lead them with little one step at a time?

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Well, John, this has been a great conversation today. Super helpful for people. I really appreciate you taking some time out of your busy schedule to be with us. If we want to send people to somewhere online to track with you, to track with the church, where do we want to send them?

John Sellers — Probably our Instagram page. It’s @journeyconnect. Our website’s journeyconnect.org. And so those would be the two spots.

Rich Birch — Great. Thanks so much, John. I appreciate you being here today.

John Sellers — Thank you for having me.

In this special workshop episode, Rich Birch unpacks the same five systems thriving churches use to move from hoping for growth to launching it. If you’ve ever felt like your church’s momentum is hard to sustain—or that your people love your church but don’t naturally invite—this episode gives you a simple roadmap to turn things around before Christmas.

You’ll learn:

Plus: Rich shares a behind-the-scenes look at the Church Growth Incubator—a year-long coaching experience for church teams serious about sustainable growth.

Learn more about the cohort here: Church Growth Incubator Proposal

Click here to apply: apply.churchgrowthincubator.com

Apply for the Church Growth Incubator by November 19th and unlock a special fast-action bonus — Rich will come to your church for a full on-site staff day in January–March 2026. This in-person strategy session (a $3,500 value) is designed to accelerate your church’s progress, align your team, and help you implement the five growth levers faster. Space is limited to those who apply before the deadline.

Listen now and take your next step toward a thriving invite culture.

Nice is not a growth strategy.

When I was a young adult, I worked at a Christian summer camp called Camp Mini-Yo-We. You know the place; canoes skimming across a glassy lake, worship songs around a campfire that somehow made the stars feel closer, friendships soldered together over bug juice and burnt marshmallows. It was the first laboratory where I learned leadership, not from a book, but from a cabin of eleven-year-olds who expected their counselor to be part sherpa, part coach, part mom.

Six campers. That was our number. Six guys barely fit around the heavy pine dining-hall tables. I could sit at the head and scan the whole universe in one glance, who needed seconds, who needed sleep, who needed a nudge to apologize. At night, everyone got airtime as conversation slid into the delicious randomness only Summer Camp can produce. Six names? Between the 10 a.m. opening-day staff huddle and the 2 p.m. arrival window, I could have them down cold, name and hometown, hopefully making those first few moments of my campers’ time at Summer Camp a little easier by knowing their names.

Then I moved up to an older program. Ten campers.

Ten changed everything. Now we needed two tables. Walking around Camp, I had to count in my head like a security detail, “one, two, three…” because a head swivel no longer covered it. Ten names felt exponentially harder than six, not 33% harder … impossibly harder. The inside jokes multiplied faster than I could track them. Dynamics shifted. I couldn’t “pastor” each kid in the same way anymore; I had to build systems … ask guys to look out for each other, delegate a table leader, plan check-ins, and enforce lights-out like clockwork.

Leading six was craft. Leading ten required architecture.

I learned young: group size changes everything; the experience, the culture, and the leadership it takes to keep people safe, growing, and moving together. Scale doesn’t just add complexity; it alters the physics. And that truth doesn’t stop at the lake.

Let’s be blunt: 800 is a trap size. Only a sliver of North American Protestant churches ever hit 500–1,000 in attendance, roughly 4 percent, and fewer than 2 percent ever break 1,000. [ref]

That’s not random; it’s structural. At 800, what got you here, tight relationships, consensus leadership, and that beloved “family feel”, quietly becomes the lid on what God could do next.

Tim Keller called this “size culture.” Every size behaves differently, and if you impose small-church expectations on a larger body, like expecting the senior pastor to be personally available to everyone, you wreak havoc. Decision-making slows to a crawl, six-hour elder meetings become normal, and leaders burn out doing shepherding that should be owned by teams and systems.

What once felt like unity becomes veto power. That’s not pastoral care—it’s organizational anemia.

Niceness mimics fruit. It creates harmony, low conflict, and positive vibes. But harmony without movement is hospice, not health.

Mid-sized plateau churches show an uncomfortable pairing: insider satisfaction is often high while evangelistic engagement is low. [ref] Per-capita giving can even look strong precisely because the room is full of long-time Christians, not new believers.

Translation: your core is comfortable; your front door is closing.

This is where theology gets misused. “We’re being faithful; we’re not chasing numbers.” Faithfulness and fearlessness are not enemies. The Church in Acts was constantly adding people and was constantly in tension. When “peace” becomes an excuse to protect preferences, that’s not gentleness … it’s mission drift.

Litmus test: If a new person has to learn your internal slang, intuit your unwritten rules, and fight to get a seat at your proverbial table, your niceness is for insiders. Niceness that never risks, never disappoints, never decides isn’t love. It’s abdication.

Can we please stop with all the TLA’s in the church? Three Letter Acronyms! They obscure meaning and clearly communicate who is “in” and who is “out”.

At around 800, you are too big to function like a living room, and too small to afford bureaucracy. You need clarity … not more committees.

Keller’s counsel is surgical here: as size grows, decision-making must shift from whole-church consensus to empowered staff and leaders, with the board focused on high-level governance. [ref] Refuse to shift and you produce exactly what you fear: burnout, ambiguity, and decline.

Consensus is beautiful in a cabin of six. At 800, it’s a growth killer.

This isn’t about becoming “corporate.” It’s about becoming clear. The courage to choose mission over maintenance will feel less “nice” to insiders and far more loving to the neighbor who hasn’t met Jesus yet.

The data is stubborn: growing churches actively equip and encourage people to invite their friends, 72% of growing churches emphasize invitation versus 43% of declining churches. [ref]

And on the demand side, the harvest is shockingly open: large majorities of unchurched people report they would attend if a friend invited them. Your problem isn’t interest; it’s invitation.

A strong invite culture isn’t a program. It’s what a healthy church does when leadership is clear, structure is sane, and volunteers are equipped.

Think of these as your “from → to” moves—the shifts that turn niceness into leadership and momentum.

Cast a crisp, repeatable vision for outsiders, not insiders. If your insider language requires a decoder ring, you’ve already told guests, “This isn’t for you.” Teach your people to see the church through a guest’s eyes… jargon-free, warm welcome, obvious next steps.

Rewire governance. Board = mission/guardrails. Staff = operations. Push decisions down to competent leaders, with clear success metrics and review rhythms. Replace “everyone signs off” with “the right people decide, on time”.

Audit staff and key volunteers for scale capacity. Do they recruit? Build teams? Delegate outcomes? Your church stalls at the ceiling of your leaders’ ability to multiply leaders. Hire or reassign accordingly.

If new people have ten “next steps,” they’ll take none. Reduce to the one or two actions that most predict movement. e.g., New Here → Join a Team—then architect everything to drive there.

If you can’t see it, you won’t shift it. Track documented first-time guests, return rate, conversion to groups/teams, and invite touchpoints. Celebrate every baptism, every “I was invited by…,” every story—because what you celebrate, you replicate.

At Summer Camp, six kids at one table could be pastored by the presence and charisma of one person. Ten needed systems. Eight hundred needs leadership. Not mean, not brusque, but clear. Clear about who we’re trying to reach. Clear about how we decide. Clear about the path from the seat to serving to sent.

Niceness keeps insiders comfortable. Leadership makes room for the next person God is sending.

If your church is hovering at 800, your greatest act of kindness might be your next courageous decision.

This month:

Because nice doesn’t change cities. Clarity and courage—animated by the Spirit—do.

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re joined by Jeff Warren, Senior Pastor of Park Cities Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas. Founded 86 years ago, PCBC is a fast-growing multicultural, multilingual, and multigenerational church.

What does it mean to stay faithful when leadership gets hard? In this candid conversation, Jeff shares lessons from decades of ministry—what he’s learned about identity, calling, and staying grounded when the pressures of leadership rise. From navigating the complexity of a large, legacy church to cultivating spiritual vitality among staff and volunteers, his perspective is both refreshing and deeply rooted in grace.

To learn more about Park Cities Baptist Church, visit pcbc.org. You can also find Jeff Warren on Instagram and Threads at @jeff_warren and discover his book Live Forgiven wherever books are sold.

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Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Portable Church

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Rich Birch — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Really looking forward to today’s conversation. I know it’s going to be the kind of thing that’s going to be helpful for you. Hopefully inspiring, hopefully help you to think about maybe the future of your church a little bit.

Rich Birch — Today, we have got Jeff Warren with us. He is from Park Cities Baptist Church and has served in multiple roles. If I’m getting it right, the young adults pastor, the minister the men’s ministry associate pastor, and since 2010, the senior pastor. Park City (PCBC) is a multicultural, multilingual, multi-generational church that meets in multiple venues, which is lots of multis in one sentence in Dallas. They’re also one of the fastest growing churches in the city. Jeff, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.

Jeff Warren — All right, Rich. Hey, great to be with you, man. And you about got it right. Yeah, I was here previously as student pastor right out of seminary.

Rich Birch — Okay, nice.

Jeff Warren — And so I was here for lots of years and then and gone.

Rich Birch — Yeah

Jeff Warren — I was in McKinney just north of here for 10, 11, and then back. The Lord called me back where I’m now ah dedicating babies of kids in my youth ministry and, you know, all that kind of thing. So really cool.

Rich Birch — So good.

Jeff Warren — Yeah, yeah.

Rich Birch — That’s great. Well, well, um I’d love to hear a little bit more about PCBC. Kind of tell us the story, fill in the flavor. You know, if you were, if we came this weekend, tell us a little bit of what we would see.

Jeff Warren — Yeah, so you would you would come ah here at Northwest Highway in Dallas where there are thousands of cars driving by me right now. We are I like to say we’re yeah we’re a legacy church. You know, we’ve been around. We’ll celebrate this next month 86 years of being here in Dallas…

Rich Birch — Wow, that’s amazing.

Jeff Warren — …and the church was was it was planted, like a lot of folks probably listening, we met at University Park Elementary School ah for a while. Small group of people said there ought to be a church in Park Cities, where just right north of me right now from my office um was really the kind of the highest furthest point of North Dallas. We have ah charter members who remember it was big field, which is hard to believe.

Rich Birch — Wow. Yes. It’s packed now. Yeah.

Jeff Warren — You you can’t get out of a field, you know, for, yeah, for miles and miles. So all that said though, you would show up at big, you know, giant traditional, church with a steeple, you know, we’re steeple people, all the things.

Jeff Warren — But once you, gosh, step in, you would find that you’re greeted with a lot of love. It’s a challenging ah thing to find, okay where do I fit in? Wait, where do I go? So you find it all on our website. But we have multi-, as you said. I like to say intergenerational, right?

Rich Birch — Good. I like that. Yeah, nice.

Jeff Warren — We’re cross-generational, but intergenerational, that’s hard work, you know, we could talk about too.

Jeff Warren — But yeah, we have we have five services on a Sunday morning. Two of those, one’s in a chapel, one’s in a you know giant sanctuary, a beautiful sanctuary we have here. And then two of those are in the Great Hall where we have a contemporary you know modern worship and then En Español that meets in the and a Great Hall as well.

Jeff Warren — So we have all that. It sounds complicated, but once you arrive, we can point you to where you need to be. We have connect groups on Sunday mornings as well. So you have all those options with kids and all the things that happen here on Sunday morning.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s ah that’s a lot going on. That’s that’s incredible. I’d love to talk about the intergenerational. You know, that’s obviously something that you’re excited about and that God’s used. Talk us through when you say intergenerational, what what do you mean by that? What’s that look like?

Jeff Warren — Yeah. So you can imagine in a legacy church, a lot of different, the tension, you know, of a lot of different opinions, different experiences, all the things can make you crazy you know half the time, used to more so than it does now. I’ve seen it as just a glorious and beautiful thing to be in ah an intergenerational church where people have different ways of worshiping the Lord, different ways to connect.

Jeff Warren — So that’s why, in part, we have you know a lot of different options here. We have you know you yeah I know you talk to a lot of folks who have kind of one church, multiple locations. I like to think we we’re multiple venues in one church, you know one place.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jeff Warren — And we also have a couple of sites off campus too, though, with our Spanish-speaking ministry. But all that said, man, the beauty and the glory of of a church that has an older, you know, I called the gal two weeks ago. I called on a Saturday, called her on her 100th birthday, you know, to wish her a happy birthday.

Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.

Jeff Warren — And then to be dedicating, as we did this past week, dedicating babies, you know, parents coming to dedicate their kids before the Lord. It’s just a beautiful thing. The challenge, Rich, comes with, I like to say intergenerational, you know, and that’s the that’s the challenge is to constantly allow and and and leverage our older adults with all the wisdom and all the things where you have Gen Z who so wants more and more mentors.

Jeff Warren — I talked to a gal last night. She’s in her 30s. I’m just looking for a mentor. Talk to a gal on Sunday. I need an older woman in my life. So the beauty of that is I know some older women. We can do this. You know, but it’s also the challenge. You come on our campus and it’s, hey, you’re young person, hey, they’re over there. And older person, you probably, okay, you’re probably over here in the chapel or whatever.

Jeff Warren — And so we we like to have, we have events and gatherings. We had one last night, a prayer gathering where we had we talked about how to respond to all the violence taking place in the world. And so it’s cross-generational. And so that’s the challenge, I think, the tension not to resolve but to manage is to connect our people across generational lines.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Jeff Warren — We do periodically come together, as we will, a few times, probably four, maybe five times um a year, where we gather all together and worship the Lord. We’ll do that for our anniversary upcoming.

Rich Birch — That’s cool.

Jeff Warren — And yeah, so it that’s the challenge along with it.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I’d love to kind of double click on that. I like that you’re saying it’s a challenge, it’s a tension, it’s glorious, and it’s beautiful. You know, every, and and, you know, there was a time in the life of the church, there was this idea, and you’ll no doubt know these words, this homogeneous unit idea that like, churches are going to grow by like all being the same. But actually increasingly we’ve just found that’s just not working, frankly. And it’s actually not a reflection of the kingdom of Christ.

Jeff Warren — Right.

Rich Birch — We don’t really want to do that. It’s it’s actually quite a bad idea and you’re trying to live out all kinds of diversity—age is one of them, you know, ah ethnic, racial, you know, there’s lots of ways we’re trying to to have diversity as a church. And what are you learning about trying to walk that line? What’s kind of practical? How are you doing that? How are you trying to drive towards unity? Like you say, living in the tension or the challenge of that?

Jeff Warren — Yeah, I think, as you noted, I remember that too, ho homogeneous unit a principle. I think it was Peter Wagner…

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Jeff Warren — …in you know another age and era. But…

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Jeff Warren — …and you know and a lot of us like, okay, let’s go, thinking that was right and good.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah..

Jeff Warren — We didn’t read Revelation 7:9, where all this is heading, right?

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.

Jeff Warren — People from all tribes and nations. So, yeah, doesn’t look much like the kingdom of God. I think that’s the first step is to recognize, man, we we want to be that church. Now, if you know anything about Dallas, you come here, we’re in the Park Cities. So we’re we’re a township within Dallas, you know. And I don’t mind telling you, know we are we are white. I mean, we’re white up in here. And ah and very affluent ah part of, you know, part of Dallas as well.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Jeff Warren — But with that, ah we’re involved in a lot of ministry. I’ve heard others who’ve said, hey, you know, oftentimes the diversity around the community of the church, say within a one mile radius or so, is a lot more diverse than than the actual church itself. And so we have made some strides there, though. We we have become more and more colorful along the way, which is a greater picture of heaven.

Jeff Warren — Our In Español ministry is flourishing in a place where, against all odds, um our our Spanish language ministry is flourishing. And they are an integral part of our church as well. So that just opens the door for all kinds of opportunities. We’ve been involved in a lot of racial justice and reconciliation across the city of Dallas where we’ve partnered with ah churches, pastor swaps, all those good things.

Rich Birch — That’s great.

Jeff Warren — But um more and more, I think you were asking for practical things.

Rich Birch — That’s good. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jeff Warren — I think it’s you know it’s that message of grace that’s got to drive everything. That everyone’s welcome here. I like to say it this way, we are radically devoted to hospitality and we are radically devoted to holiness.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Jeff Warren — So becoming like Jesus. You know, I like to say, man, with all the theological debates we could have, you know, Jesus was perfect theology embodied, right?

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Jeff Warren — So if you’re if you’re not, if you’re if you’re theology, the application of Scripture doesn’t look like Jesus in the end, you’re doing it wrong. And so grace is at the center. I like to say, you know, I don’t like to say we’re a centrist church – that feels like we’re sitting on the fence, right?

Jeff Warren — But but but we really are. We’re not we’re you know We’re not hardcore right and left and whatever that might mean for people here in America in particular. We find our we we find ourselves at the deep center…

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Jeff Warren — …where Christ is at the center of the church. And with that message of grace ah constantly in the mix, people, I think, do do feel and sense, man, I think I’m loved here. It doesn’t matter my skin color, doesn’t matter what look like, how old I am, young. And so that’s kind of the driving point…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Jeff Warren — …I think, is are you you preaching that message of grace?

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good.

Jeff Warren — Yeah.

Rich Birch — That’s so good. Well, um I don’t think you’ll mind me saying this. You have been in the saddle for a few years. You’ve been ah leader for quite a while, been through a lot. I’m sure you’ve been through ups and downs, wins and losses, things that have been good, things that haven’t been so good.

Jeff Warren — Yeah.

Rich Birch — How do you as a leader, how do you keep yourself, your soul anchored in Jesus?

Jeff Warren — Yeah.

Rich Birch — How do you keep leading through when things are up and down and not get sidelined? How do you do that?

Jeff Warren — Yeah, man. That’s a loaded one, right? We can talk a long time about that.

Rich Birch — Yes, lot there.

Jeff Warren — And I’ll try to center those thoughts. I was yeah I was at ah I was speaking at a seminary um ah not too long ago, and one of the guys said, the professor said, we need to have you back because our students need to see happy pastors. And you know I saw I think you probably saw, Barna recently came out, that what, 42% of all pastors are considering quitting.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jeff Warren — Man, I haven’t seen those numbers since COVID, right?

Rich Birch — Right. Right. Yeah.

Jeff Warren — I haven’t. I get that.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeff Warren — I’m in a great place right now. I’m grateful. I am in a happy place. But man, I’ve had some dark nights of the soul. I would just say to all of your young pastor leaders out there that if you stay at this long enough, you will have those. And what’s what’s kept me in, Rich, has been a clear calling to the ministry and to this place.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Jeff Warren — Everywhere I’ve gone, it’s been, Lord, I’m i’m there until you yank me out. And so knowing in those moments where, man, I could be doing this elsewhere, you know that kind of thing. We always kind of look into where the grass is greener, I think. But knowing that the Lord’s called me here, those have been in those dark moments, those have been the times when I’ve been, I’m still in, I’m still in.

Jeff Warren — And I think a big part of that too, for me, a lot of us, we wrap our identity up in our work that we do. That’s not just pastoring thing. But we define our work by the maybe the approval of others or by performance. And in ministry, that gets real insidious. It gets twisted because I’m doing this all for God, right?

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.

Jeff Warren — And then you start to realize um along the way that, gosh, maybe not. You know, maybe maybe I do have this high need to be needed. Maybe that’s why I’m in ministry in some ways.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.

Jeff Warren — That’s why he called me. I have have empathy is my highest you know strength finder, for real. It’s like the highest of the strength.

Rich Birch — Yes. Love it.

Jeff Warren — So I feel all the feels.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jeff Warren — It serves well as a pastor, but also wrecks me. You know, when I’m like, oh, man, I I I so I love people, and I, you know, there’s underneath the dark side of that is I want them to love me too.

Jeff Warren — So I think staying centered, the main thing, Rich, that I would say is that—this is probably that moment you know in the in the sermon, in the teaching, if you hear nothing else, you know this is it.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jeff Warren — For me, it has been to constantly, I never knew ministry would be this, constantly running back to Christ and finding my identity in Him. C.S. Lewis was the one who said, and I’ll translate him differently, but he said, never base your worth on something that can be taken away from you. Right?

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Yeah.

Jeff Warren — So so I’m a you know I’m a father, I’m a son, I’m a brother, I’m a friend, I’m, oh, and I’m a pastor, you know, all those things. None of those things are the truest thing about me. And someday, when, you know, parents are gone, when, you know, whatever, name it, you know, it’s why professional athletes who have a career in ending injury, right, need to not just have therapy.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jeff Warren — They need to have, I mean, physical, they need to have real therapy. They don’t know who they are anymore. And so if our identity is founded being a pastor in my case, then man, that is going to be a rough road. And because, right, it’s up and down all the time.

Jeff Warren — And and oftentimes we base that on numbers. How’s my church doing? Are we growing?

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Jeff Warren — You know, am I crushing it in terms of sermons?

Rich Birch — Yep.

Jeff Warren — And that’s been the thing is constantly going back to this private personal prayer, Rich, that I have often into worship before I come before the Lord in in my quiet time. Lord, to remind me again of how much you love me. Remind me again of how much you love me.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Jeff Warren — And that’s the key thing.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Jeff Warren — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Let’s let’s double click on that. There’s an interesting tension there of having our identity firmly rooted in Christ, that’s obviously preeminent. And, you know, having a clear calling like that, you know, Jesus has called us to be where we are today. He’s called us to the role we’re in. Man, the lines can get blurry, though, between those two. You know, the kind of like our the call to have a, um you you know, a really strong call on our life for this, you know, this season or this place or this thing, this mission that we’re a part of can get wrapped up in like, well, maybe that’s the person I am.

Rich Birch — How do you, how do you hold both of those at the same time? How do you hold both of those in a way that that’s healthy? Because it seems as an outsider, it seems like you’re you’re able to do that well.

Jeff Warren — Well, um It’s been a journey, Rich. I do think I’m doing it better than I have in the past. So ah for me, I would say it this way, um as quick as I can, I guess, here. 2 Corinthians 5.21 is my life verse. It says, He made Him—we all know this verse—He may made Him who knew no sin to become sin for us, right?

Jeff Warren — The first half of that verse, that’s the gospel. Like, okay, yeah, Jesus, He’s our substitute more than just our good example, right? But then the latter part of that verse is what changed my life. Years ago, I was probably in my 30s, already in ministry, doing youth ministry at the time. But man, I was running like a wild man. Like I was at times, that’s a longer story, but I was so busy. I was married, no kids at that point. And I was like, who’s pointing a gun at my head? I can’t stop.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeff Warren — You know, I love what I’m doing. But Stacey, my wife, was like, are you you’re busy again this weekend? You know, it was kind of that moment. And I was like, what is what is happening to me? And it was this need to be needed. And and then I realized that ministry can become like a drug, right?

Jeff Warren — But so I understood the gospel, all that. But the latter part of that verse, he made him and who knew no sin to become sin for us. Then it says there’s this henna clause, a comma in a Greek.

Jeff Warren — I know just enough Greek to be dangerous, right? There’s ah but it’s a purpose clause that Paul used over and over again. He says, in order that, in other words, this happened in order that. And it says, in order that we might become the righteousness of God in him. Right? And so so what that means, I mean, I’ve asked that question before college students, adults, you know what is the righteousness of God? And I often get crickets.

Jeff Warren — And I think that’s because we don’t see we don’t know who we are. We are totally accepted, fully pleasing, completely loved, by Him. That is who I am.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Jeff Warren — I am first a beloved son of the Most High King. That’s who I am. So much of ministry, I never knew… I mean, this is Christian life. But ministry is constantly, Lord, to remind me again. That’s the battle. And and I mean, you’ve asked the question. The battle is to stay there, to remain there.

Rich Birch — That’s good. Yeah, that’s so good.

Jeff Warren — And that’s for every one of us. And I never knew that ministry would be such a battlefield to constantly go back to Him and to be found in Him, is the phrase Paul loved, right? To be in Him-ness, the doctrine of of remaining in Him. That’s not to, in my case, not losing my salvation. I did nothing to gain it. I did nothing to receive it, so I can do nothing to lose it. But to stay in Him.

Rich Birch — That’s so good.

Jeff Warren — So that’s a it truly is, Rich, a constant spiritual discipline of of remaining in Him. And so, you know, not everybody can do this. You’ve got kids running around, you know. I’ve had twins and and I had three kids. But but now I can I can get up. My mornings are quiet. I get up early. You know, I think the key to life is going to bed on time, being early if you can.

Rich Birch — It’s true.

Jeff Warren — And I like to hit the day in before the Lord and just get centered. So that’s what we do. And then, Lord, help me to how to live out of this.

Rich Birch — That’s so so good.

Jeff Warren — Help me live out of this.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. Well, let’s pivot back to the church. You know, PCBC is is growing. It’s, you know, was flagged as one of the fastest growing churches in the country. You know, healthy things grow. How do you think about the kind of connection between growth and church health? How do those things fit together? How do you ensure that you’re not just, you know, weeds grow too. We don’t want those to we don’t want those to grow.

Jeff Warren — Yeah, right.

Rich Birch — We want something healthy to grow ah that’s got great fruit on and on the on the limbs. Talk me through how that works for you and how do you lead in that direction?

Jeff Warren — Yes. So, um you know, I think it’s really hard to find healthy churches because it’s hard to find healthy leaders, right?

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.

Jeff Warren — It’s hard to find healthy teams, leadership teams, because it’s hard to find healthy leaders. And so I I’ve really just, I think it’s it’s on me, it’s on key leaders in our church.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Jeff Warren — I’m constantly talking to our team about how to be healthy, what I just described to you. I want my team to walk, remain in Him. I challenged my team this week, Rich. You know of the number of pastors who’ve fallen, particularly here in Dallas. It almost seems like there’s one every every week, right?

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, it’s been it’s been quite a season in Dallas.

Jeff Warren — And another just last week. And Yeah, so I’m, ah so my, you know, I I talked to our entire, we had an all staff. We have once a month, yesterday, Tuesday, and um gave them, you know, again, the big challenge. I did it with our ministers as well, just remain in the Lord. Let’s let’s not let’s not let that happen here. You know, how do we keep accountable with one another? And and so that’s that’s the great challenge. I think i think too often we it’s ministry pace can be so fast and so crazy. And we’re in a season right now that is wild. I like to say Jesus was often busy, but he was never in a hurry.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Jeff Warren — And so I love to talk to our team about opportunities to slow down, even in busy seasons. How can we be in a busy season, managing life, family, marriage, all those things, and and stay centered in Him?

Jeff Warren — So I think more pastor leaders need to model that. We need to live that out and talk about it as a team. We read Scripture together. We have this Dwell reading plan. You can find it our website. All of our members are reading Scripture, the same Scriptures, every morning, every day.

Rich Birch — So good.

Jeff Warren — And so for years, Rich, I’ve wondered, how can I help my team be accountable? How can I be certain they’re in the Word? You know, I can’t I used to tell them, there’s only so much I can do for you. I hope you’re doing this.

Jeff Warren — But now at every staff meeting, every minister’s meeting, before we start, we’ll pray together and I’ll say, all right, hey, turn to your neighbor. Let’s talk about what you heard from God this morning when you’re in His Word.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeff Warren — And we’re all reading the same thing.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good.

Jeff Warren — And so, yeah, that’s a relative past few years, a relatively new thing. And so we talk about what are we learning? How are we growing? You know, then BAM, let’s kick in. It doesn’t have to be a long part of the meeting, but it centers us, keeps us accountable.

Jeff Warren — Back to your question, I think that’s that’s key, is is is keeping everybody is spiritually healthy, and then myself, executive pastor, keeping us on on target, on track.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s good.

Jeff Warren — You know, and like we’re on a 100-day run you know right now as we’re doing a lot of vision planning. We’re doing long-range stuff towards 2030 right now for the next five years. And but centering in on, okay, what what’s the next? It’s kind that one four, one four, if you’ve seen that, that Auxano, others have used. That helps us.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. Yeah, I was going to ask for an example, but I love that idea of like, hey, we’re we’re on the same reading plan. We’re trying to keep everybody and hey, we’re going to even integrate that into our conversations. I think that’s that’s really practical.

Rich Birch — I often hear, you know, like it might be easy for the lead guy or the leader, whoever the leader of the church is, to be busy, but not in a hurry because like they can control their schedule. But working in a large, fast growing church is it’s like relentless, right? The weekend is always coming. Is there anything else that you do to try to ensure the rhythms with your team that you don’t get to the place where your, your team is like, Oh sure. That’s great for Jeff, but that doesn’t work in my world. Is there anything else you do to try to help your team, you know, run at a good pace?

Jeff Warren — Yeah, I think I think it’s staying it’s it’s staying in your lane, doing what you’ve called to do. Yeah that’s a great question, Rich. And because I don’t have the quick answer, I’m like, ha, we got to work on this one.

Rich Birch — Yeah, you’re good. That’s good.

Jeff Warren — Again, instead of just, hey, I’ll model that for you. Because truthfully, I mean, I love, like a lot of us, I love the work I do. I’ve got a really, I got a busy day today, you know doing a lot of things I love. But I’ll also model the role…

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Jeff Warren — …and then I’ll ask them one of the parts of our our evaluation even involves some ah some holistic health. And so the at the beginning of every year, I ask them to give to me and we share together the you know, kind of what’s your single word for the year kind of center in what are you what are you looking for God to do and desiring for him to do in you?

Jeff Warren — And then we look at, literally, we look at physical, spiritual, interrelational, and then vocational life.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Jeff Warren — And then we talk about what are your goals for the year. And that plays into then how you’re doing. So I can come back to knowing every one of them. Hey, want to work out a few times a week. You know, I’m gonna I’m going to finally lose some weight. I need to go to bed earlier. You know, whatever the thing might be, try to keep each other accountable in that. Easier said than done.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jeff Warren — But I think I think it’s true. If you model it as a leader, and I think you’re okay. You know, we all want to, I think a lot of times we think our members want us to, I hope my pastor is about to kill himself serving Jesus, you know? And they really don’t mean that, but it can feel that way.

Rich Birch — No, no.

Jeff Warren — So when I get a chance, like I want to be out on my bike, you know, I want to be. I’d love to ride. That’s my happy place. And so I’ll be be out at the lake these days. I’m trying to find some gap there. I think it’s real important that you you you set a schedule for the week and try to set a pattern.

Jeff Warren — So there are certain times that are study times for me that can’t be touched. There are certain times where I do mark out, when am I going to get some exercise, you know, that kind of thing. Again, easier said than done ah because, you know, there’s going to come the crisis.

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.

Jeff Warren — There’s going to come, oh, I’m doing that funeral. You know, that happens.

Rich Birch — Right. Right. That pushes in for sure. Yeah that’s, that’s, that’s great. Well, you’ve written a book called “Live Forgiven”. I’d love to hear a little bit more about that. We’ll link to that in the show notes, but why don’ you tell us a little bit about, uh, about that book? What, you know, kind of what was the, the germ of that? Well, that’s a lot of work to pull together, a resource like that. Talk us through that. What’s, what’s that look like?

Jeff Warren — Yeah, so it’s a little bit of what I talked about earlier. It really is unpacking the gospel. What does it mean to live forgiven? In other words, what is grace? And then how do you appropriate grace in your life?

Jeff Warren — So it really is built around my life verse, 2 Corinthians 5.21 that we talked about earlier. And a lot of what I’ve learned, the appropriation of grace to really, again, remain in Him, I think you know it’s possible today, Rich, and this is a big deal, this is what I’m preaching a lot, it’s possible to self-identify as a Christian in America and not be a disciple of Jesus. And those are two very different things, right? I know that you know John Mark Comer, among others, have talked a lot about that. He’s just riffing off Dallas Willard. We all know that. And that that there’s a real difference. And so anyway, it’s it’s about that.

Jeff Warren — Once capturing grace and understanding the gospel that Christianity is not work harder, get better. It’s believe more deeply what He’s already accomplished for us. And then, okay, yeah, I get that. But then how to appropriate that?

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Jeff Warren — How can I live forgiven, remaining in Him? And that’s my, you know, if you come around here much, that’s my constant message. We don’t have much of another message, really, do we, Rich? We’ve got one message, and it’s the grace of God.

Rich Birch — Right. Amen. Yeah.

Jeff Warren — And then it’s parsed out in all kinds of ways. But, yeah, that’s what the book’s about.

Rich Birch — That’s great. So good. well Well, yeah, we’ll link to that. And this has been, this been a good conversation, you know, ah thinking through wrestling through you know, your own um relationship with Jesus, how that impacts your life, how that impacts your leadership, you know, leading a, you know, very busy churches doing all kinds of things and is reaching people. Busy is to the wrong word, in a very active church that’s, you know, making an impact, which is incredible. It’s been a good conversation. Anything else you’d love to share just as we kind of land today’s episode?

Jeff Warren — Yeah, I would share something that ah um I’ve come to over the past few years and a new learning for me that I think would be really good for pastors, leaders listening. Another thing that’s really set me free um has been to to live in the present, to be mindful and and to live in the moment. We hear that a lot, but let me let me explain that.

Jeff Warren — You know when COVID hit, um if we were if we were deciding that you know our worth and our value is found in how many people come into our church, that was kind of blown up, right? And so during that time, I was really I was really wrestling. Like a lot of us, was real dark time because any decision I made as a pastor… and I’m starting to have some PTSD you know right now with some of what’s going on our culture right now.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s true.

Jeff Warren — You know the old the the old but the trope, you know if your pastor didn’t say this, you know this past week…

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, it’s wild, right?

Jeff Warren — …I mean, you know, you ought to find another church. I’m like, please.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff Warren — Okay, you’re not pastoring my church.

Rich Birch — No, exactly.

Jeff Warren — So so during that time, long longer story short, out of that then, where I thought, well, we’re going to bounce back, you know. We we were, think, a lot of legacy churches. We did not bounce back, right? We’re back. We’re beyond where we were pre-COVID. But it has been, I mean, it’s been work, right?

Rich Birch — It’s a journey. Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff Warren — So so for me the the learning is this. I have a friend who is a recovering addict. He’s got a ministry that’s amazing. Michael Moulton, M to the Rock is his is this name.

Jeff Warren — But he I sat down with him and I said, Michael, how do you do it, man? How are you sober? How do you remain sober?

Jeff Warren — He said he said, Jeff, I’ve got to live in the moment. I’ve got to live in the present.

Jeff Warren — And I said, okay, help me there. Help me. What do you mean?

Jeff Warren — He said, man, if I go back to in the past, all I have is shame and regret. My guy’s got 23 mug shots, okay. He’s had he has a past, right. And he says, if I go in the past I have shame or regret. If I go into the future, all I have is worry and anxiety. He says, so I’ve got to stay right here.

Jeff Warren — And then I said, how do you do how do you stay right here? I mean I get that, but he said, I’ve got I’ve got to serve somebody.

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.

Jeff Warren — I’ve got I’ve got to get outside of myself. And I’ve got to serve someone.

Jeff Warren — So Rich, here’s what I’d say to to close all that. It’s been so freeing for me. It means that I’m going to…what is success? Okay, there’s not numbers in ministry or whatever, the you know, bigger, better church, something. What is success? I asked the Lord during that time, Lord, what is success in ministry? And he he kind of, you know, holy headbutt, kind of slapped me upside the head and said, no, there’s a question before that question. Shows you where your mind and your heart is. The question is not success in ministry. What is success in life, right? What is success as a disciple?

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Jeff Warren — And what I came to, and this is not new for me, I discovered later that Mother Teresa, among others. It’s success is faithfulness. Full stop.

Rich Birch — That’s good. Amen. Amen.

Jeff Warren — Not faithfulness so that… Right? No, no, no. Faithfulness full stop. And so what does faithfulness look like? This is where all this goes. Faithfulness looks like being faithful in the moment. Like with whomever He’s put in front of me right now.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Jeff Warren — Not not this afternoon.

Rich Birch — Good. Right.

Jeff Warren — Not my lunch appointment. Right now.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Jeff Warren — Whomever He’s put in front of me, focus! And whatever He’s called me to do in the moment. And man, that has been so freeing for me.

Rich Birch — That’s so good.

Jeff Warren — It’s a battle, but if we can live that way…

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Jeff Warren — …I can put, you know, you and I both, I can put this hour together. Next I got another appointment later. I’m meeting with another, you know, whatever. I can go home tonight, hopefully give my best emotional energy to Stacey, my wife, and I can put my head on the pillow tonight and go, I mean, I kind of messed up, you know, 2 o’clock, I blew it, and then 3 o’clock, that wasn’t a great meeting.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeff Warren — But I sought to be faithful in the moment.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, that’s good.

Jeff Warren — And you put some hours together, you put days together, months and years together, and someday, you know, it’s what we long to hear. Hey you’ve been faithful. Well done. Been faithful. And those happened that just happens one moment at a time.

Rich Birch — Yeah, Jeff, that’s so good. That’s so good. So helpful for people. I appreciate that. Great. Yeah, super helpful insights and great for us to wrestle through and think about those things.

Rich Birch — If people want to track with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online?

Jeff Warren — Yeah, you can find us at pcbc.org. Find out everything about us. You can even find there. You can find, know, I’m on Instagram. You know, Twitter, less and less. Facebook, you know, dumpster fire, even less.

Rich Birch — True. So true.

Jeff Warren — I’m on Threads. You can find me.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Jeff Warren — I think it’s jeff_warren, but just find, yeah, Jeff Warren.

Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s great. Appreciate you being here today, sir. Thank you so much.

Jeff Warren — Thank you, Rich. Thanks for all you’re doing, man. I love love you. Appreciate all you’re doing, bro. Keep it up.

Rich Birch — Thanks so much.

Jeff Warren — All right.

Most churches are overspending on visibility and under-investing in invitations.

In the late 1900s I ran a dot-com back when saying “I run a dot-com” got you a seat at the cool table.

We obsessed over our branding. Fancy logo. Perfect domain. Debated five kinds of red like our lives depended on hex codes. Launch day came and… crickets.

Why? We were doing marketing when we should’ve been doing conversations. The growth strategy wasn’t a new shade of crimson; it was getting out of the building and talking to customers.

Churches make the same mistake. We assume the next Facebook hack, TikTok trend, or website refresh will push us over the top. But the channel we’re ignoring is sitting right in front of us every Sunday: people who personally invite people. The data has been shouting this for years: personal invitations beat paid reach … in effectiveness, in trust, and in retention.

You don’t need a new logo, Google Ads, or a slicker site. You need to build inviters.

If you want durable and compounding growth, stop buying marketing and start building inviters.

Call it Invite Propensity, the percentage of attenders who invite someone in a given period. It’s the church’s NPS (Net Promoter Score): a simple human metric that predicts future growth better than vanity numbers (impressions, followers, even raw attendance). When invite propensity rises, everything compounds — first-time guests, baptisms, small-group participation — because invitation rides on the rails of relationship, the most trusted medium on earth.

We live in the attention recession. More posts, more reels, more ads, but diminishing returns. Meanwhile, trust in institutional messaging lags far behind trust in people we actually know. According to Nielsen’s global survey, recommendations from friends and family are the most trusted form of promotion, outranking every ad channel by a mile. [ref] McKinsey adds that word-of-mouth drives 20–50% of decisions, cutting through the noise in ways paid media can’t. [ref]

Translation for church leaders: the most persuasive “ad” for your church isn’t an ad. It’s a friend who says, “Sit with me.”

And it’s not just first-touch effectiveness. It’s stickiness. People who come through relationships are more likely to stay because relationships are the glue. Research on assimilation shows that those who remain active long-term average seven new friendships; those who drift away average fewer than two. [ref]

Friends don’t just get people in the door … they keep connected to the church long term.

None of this requires marketing spending or media buy. It requires a robust invite culture.

Invite Propensity is the share of your congregation that has personally invited someone in the last 90 days.

Why it matters:

If 12% of your people invite one person per quarter and half of the invitees show up, that’s a 6% quarterly lift in first-time guests before a single ad dollar is spent. If 30% of those guests connect into groups or serve via relational bridges, you’ve just shifted the growth curve … with trust, not spend.

Should you stop all advertising? Not necessarily. Paid media can prime the pump—but the conversion happens in the relationship. Ads can raise awareness; people create action.

Here’s the uncomfortable math:

Through decades of studies, personal invitations outperform advertising by an order of magnitude. The Institute for American Church Growth found that nearly 79% of first-time guests came because someone they knew invited them, while programs, ads, and special events accounted for single-digit percentages. [ref] Meanwhile, McKinsey estimates that 20–50% of all consumer decisions … in every sector .. are driven by word-of-mouth influence. [ref]

That’s at least 10x more effective than most paid channels.

So, if invitations are roughly 10x more powerful than marketing, then … logically … you should be investing 10x more in building an invite culture than investing in marketing and ads.

That doesn’t mean kill your marketing budget. It means repurpose it. Your spending should follow your strategy:

1. Training (Staff & Systems)

Most churches don’t have a marketing problem…they have a discipleship problem disguised as one. The job of your staff isn’t to post better; it’s to prompt better. Train your team to infuse invitation into every department: kids, worship, groups, and guest services. “How does this help people bring a friend?” should become a standing meeting question. That’s your new creative brief.

Budget for leadership development, invite-culture workshops, and ongoing coaching that helps your staff stay focused on mobilizing inviters, not managing impressions.

2. Equipping (Tools for the Congregation)

People want to invite; they just don’t know how. Make it stupidly easy. The most effective churches lower friction with shareable tools—physical and digital. Think:

Budget for creative production that serves your members as marketers, not your brand as a product.

3. Motivation (Stories That Stick)

Vision leaks; motivation decays. You have to keep the invite story alive. Every Sunday, highlight someone who came because of a friend. Baptism stories? Trace them back to the first invitation. What gets celebrated gets repeated, and nothing reinforces culture like stories told in public.

Budget for story capture…video, social posts, short stage moments. Hire a part-time storyteller before you buy another ad campaign.

If your strategy is “buy attention,” you’ll keep paying rent to platforms.

If your strategy is “build inviters,” you’ll own the asset … trust.

The most persuasive message your city will hear about your church won’t come from your page. It’ll come from your people.

Stop buying marketing. Start building inviters.

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re joined by Lucinda Ross, Central Group Leader of Communications at Life.Church, one of the most influential and innovative churches in the world. Since its founding in 1996, Life.Church has grown to more than 40 locations across the U.S. and a massive global online presence. Through initiatives like the Open Network and the YouVersion Bible App, Life.Church continues to equip millions of people and churches to engage with God’s Word every day.

As Global Bible Month begins, Lucinda shares powerful insights on how churches can inspire daily Bible engagement, leverage digital tools like YouVersion to disciple people beyond Sunday, and help believers experience lasting transformation through God’s Word.

To learn more about how your church can get started with YouVersion Connect, visit youversion.com/connect or explore free resources for Global Bible Month at globalbiblemonth.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!

Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: SermonDone

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Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Super honored that you are listening in today and you’re going to be rewarded for this. You might not know it, but here in November is Global Bible Month. And I’m super honored to have—you know, you feel like you’re talking to a rock star, like somebody who’s at the center of something that’s pretty amazing that’s going on. Today’s one of those days, Lucinda Ross. She is a central group leader of communications at Life.Church.

Rich Birch — If you have been sleeping under a rock and do not know Life.Church, they started 1996. And it’s grown to this incredibly diverse group of people meeting with cities all across the United States and around the world. They have, if I’m counting correctly, if I can count all the slots, 40 physical locations in several states in the U.S. and an incredibly robust online community. Life.Church has several resources and tools for growth, ah for really helping churches grow, including their Open Network for churches and the Bible app from YouVersion, which really seeks to put God’s word in the hands of everyone, every day, everywhere. And um man, they have just done amazing stuff. And Lucinda, I’m super glad, honored really, to have you on the show today. Thanks for being here.

Lucinda Rojas Ross — Thanks so much, Rich. That was just a kind kind introduction. Just humbled and honored to play small part what God’s doing here.

Rich Birch — Well, I appreciate you being humble, ah but like YouVersion has just had such a monster impact on so many people’s lives. And I’m really happy to celebrate it this month and to kind of dive deep a little bit, tell a little bit more about that.

Rich Birch — But why don’t we kind of start before we jump in? um Tell us a little bit about your background. How did you get connected to this, this whole thing? And then I’d love to chat through what we’re talking about today.

Lucinda Rojas Ross — Yeah. So I have had the honor of being on the Life.Church team for almost 13 years. So started out attending, never thought I would be in ministry. God had me in um corporate world and thought that that’s where my place was. And he had other plans for me. And so he’s used Life.Church to change my life, to draw me closer to him. And I’m just super honored that I get to play a part in it now. And so, and part of what I do as and the leader of communications at our church is I just get to tell stories. I get to do the fun part of just sharing what God is doing in our ministries like YouVersion.

Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Well, Life.Church, man, has had just incredible impact and reach in both physical and digital realms. And God’s used it in so many ways. From your seat, from your perspective, what’s kind of driving that transformation? What is it that God’s using ah in the kind of Life.Church community to make such huge impact?

Lucinda Rojas Ross — Yeah, there’s no denying that God’s hand is all over this every step of the way. And so one of the things that are one of our leaders, Bobby Grunewald says is it’s it’s all him and it’s all his. And so when you approach things with that kind of posture, it’s um it gives you just the obedience to take risks. Because you know that we can have the faith to believe that something incredible is possible on the other side.

Lucinda Rojas Ross — And so seeing our leaders model that, um getting to play a part in that, where we are just going for it consistently thinking about, okay, what’s next? What does God have next? How, um if our vision truly is to reach people, everyone, everywhere, every day, it’s a vision of YouVersion, but also the mission of Life.Church is to lead people to become fully devoted followers of Christ.

Lucinda Rojas Ross — If those are the things that we’re focused on, those are big. That three everys in the vision of YouVersion means we’ve always got work to do. That work will outlive us. And so um thinking about just taking risk, being obedient, and seeing where God has, where that momentum is, and just pouring fuel on that fire.

Rich Birch — It’s so good. Well, you know, every pastor that’s listening in, ah you know, they want to see people be changed. They want to see people be transformed. They want, they they don’t, there’s this misnomer that, you know, pastors just want large crowds and they don’t really care whether transformation happens. That’s just not true.

Lucinda Rojas Ross — Absolutely not.

Rich Birch — Those aren’t the people I interact with. They want to see people you know, their lives turned upside down in the best possible way. What are you learning about what actually drives change in people’s lives? What are you seeing from your perspective that that actually sees that kind of transformation take place?

Lucinda Rojas Ross — Yeah. Yeah. We can all agree. Just like you said, like pastors care about people’s lives being changed. So we can all agree that there’s critical pieces to someone’s spiritual journey. So not not everyone’s on the same journey at the same time at the same pace, but those steps of faith are super critical. Finding biblical community, serving, giving. But one of the things that we’re focused on specifically at YouVersion is how do we get people engaged in God’s word every single day?

Lucinda Rojas Ross — And so spending time in God’s word, we know is a critical part of their spiritual journey of their life, the transformation that God does in their lives. And so that’s the the part, the piece we get to play in in what he’s doing in those spiritual journeys.

Lucinda Rojas Ross — And so I think just you know thinking about pastors who wanna see that happen, it’s what it’s what happens outside the walls of the church. And so, and we know that that’s the case. We know we only have that limited time with them every single weekend. um And, may you know, maybe in some other spaces, but but what is God doing outside the walls the church?

Rich Birch — Yeah. I want to—listen, pull back the fourth wall for a little bit. Just want to honor you and the team at YouVersion. Like guys have done just an incredible job. Like what a resource to give to the church. It’s had just huge impact, worth celebrating. I think I saw your crossing or have crossed a billion downloads. Like that’s just an incredible.

Rich Birch — Even just in my little small group, couple years ago, I had one of those transformative experiences with a guy. He’s the kind of guy you want to reach, mid-30s guy, unchurched guy. And he’s taken steps towards Jesus. And like, it’s like stupidly simple what I’m about to share. But he was like, you know, I’m really struggling with reading the Bible on a regular basis. And so I literally took up my phone, fired up the app.

Lucinda Rojas Ross — Love it.

Rich Birch — And I said, look here, you know, why don’t we do like a three day plan? Let’s try a three day plan this week.

Lucinda Rojas Ross — Great.

Rich Birch — And then how that goes, then if we do that, why don’t we then together do a five-day plan. and then a seven-day plan.

Lucinda Rojas Ross — Yes.

Rich Birch — And then, and literally just built up the streaks. And, and I remember a couple months later after that, he was sharing, he’s like, you know, that really changed my life. Like, he’s like, I never thought I’d be the kind of person that read the Bible every day.

Rich Birch — And this is what, you know, I know you’ve done that on scale for literally millions of people. But many churches know about the Bible app. They know about YouVersion, but they maybe haven’t connected it to the weekly rhythms of the people at their church.

Rich Birch — Like they they might say like, hey, go download the app, but they haven’t figured out how to really integrate it. I’d love to focus on that today. How can we integrate? What are you seeing kind of the best practices for integrating this app into their ministries?

Lucinda Rojas Ross — Yeah, that’s great. Oh, I love that story. Like, that’s it. That’s literally what we want to see.

Rich Birch — Part of it. That’s we’re hoping. Yeah.

Lucinda Rojas Ross — Yeah, that’s just, you know, that those little the steps to just download the app, open it, and just start taking those like steps through along the way. I think if you just back up and think about, um you hit on this really quickly, but we are approaching a billion downloads. We’re getting really close. We’re actually going to celebrate that next month, which is really, really exciting.

Lucinda Rojas Ross — But what we’re even more excited about than the number of devices that have ah God’s word is really the number of people who are regularly engaging in it. That’s actually growing really, really quickly right now. So the last five Sundays are ranked as some of the top 10 highest days ever for Bible engagement in the app. Like that’s where we are right now.

Rich Birch — Wow, that’s amazing.

Lucinda Rojas Ross — Yeah. So when you think back, I mean, where’re it’s ranking up there with like Easter and the beginning of the year when people are starting those, trying to start those habits. But we’re seeing that, that kind of momentum where the Bible app is opened a billion times every 39 days.

Rich Birch — Wow!

Lucinda Rojas Ross — And so, yeah it’s it is it’s just so encouraging and it’s just so exciting to see people hungry for God’s word. And so I think just backing up, yes, we want to get people in it, but just I think getting getting ourselves in a place to think about the why. Like why do we really want people in God’s word?

Lucinda Rojas Ross — We know that it changes their lives and we’ve all hopefully experienced the impact that it has. But when you back up and think about what will it do in their lives? How can you cast vision for what will happen on the other side of regular engagement in God’s word?

Lucinda Rojas Ross — So one of the things we talk about a lot here is the power four. So if you, a lot you may be familiar with it, but if you’re not, the Center for Bible Engagement did a study that found that engaging in the Bible four or more days a week has a profound impact on someone’s life.

Lucinda Rojas Ross — So in fact, hearing from God through his word is a single most powerful predictor of their spiritual growth. They’re more likely to share their faith. It decreases their struggles, like their felt needs, like fear, anxiety, loneliness, and actually reduce some of their like risky behaviors, like the things that they’re doing in their life that they want to stop doing.

Rich Birch — Right.

Lucinda Rojas Ross — And so if you think about that why of like, oh, it’s yes, we want people to grow in their spiritual journey, but we actually just want their lives to feel different. We want them to operate in the power of the Holy Spirit every day and reading in his word and connecting with God in that way is such an important part of doing that.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s that’s that’s so good. I know that um like church engagement, kind of engagement as a church has been at the core of the YouVersion story right from the very beginning. I remember, well, whenever YouVersion started, years ago, I remember Andy at North Point talking about, you know, I was talking to Craig Groeschel and they’re doing this thing with the Bible and like with this app and like, we’re going to try it over here too. And like right from the beginning, this idea of like churches encouraging their people to has been kind of built in right from the beginning. You mentioned that, you know, we, we see that kind of engagement, but how, how do we actually use it? Walk us through, how can we better leverage this to really shepherd our people?

Lucinda Rojas Ross — Yep, absolutely. So I think just as as a local church, getting to steward this kingdom resource, like our heart is like, how can we help equip and empower pastors and church leaders to do that? So one of the ways we do that is through YouVersion Connect.

Lucinda Rojas Ross — So there’s features in the app in the Bible app. So you might be using on a personal level, but if you haven’t kind of dug a little bit deeper, your church can actually have a dedicated space in the app where they can where people can find community, they can see who else is attending their church. And so they can find churches near them. So if you go to the discover tab or at the very bottom, you can search churches and it shows churches my friends go to, people that I’ve friended in the app, but also churches near me.

Lucinda Rojas Ross — So that getting people connected into a church, that’s super important, of course. Also pastors and church leaders can feature reading plans within their page on the Bible app. So if you’re doing a specific series on anxiety, for example, you can find a great Bible plan that you feel confident about, you want to put in front of your people, people to engage in that way. Put it on your page, and then you can promote it as you’re talking every single weekend.

Lucinda Rojas Ross — The other piece of that is there’s posts. So you can actually send passages, devotionals, sermon follow-ups it to the entire community – all the people that are following the church page. So when they open it, their your pastor’s guidance is right there with them.

Lucinda Rojas Ross — I think beyond that, there’s you know live events where you can put sermon notes. People can follow along. They can highlight. They can add notes and thoughts. So that digital way of of being able to keep keep track of what what my pastor is talking about. I can go back to it. What was he you know What did what it he or she mention and in that specific verse? Go back. What did I think about that? And reflect on it.

Lucinda Rojas Ross — I think one of the most powerful things in all of this, so when we, you know, get our church engaged in this way, you know, being able to see they’re connected, they’re following, I know, you know, what they’re, what they’re, what I’m leading them to do, but also you can get insights so that you can see what kind of engagement—on an aggregated anonymous level—but you can see what are the kinds of things that that my church is thinking about? What are they like looking for? What are they struggling with? What kinds of Bible plans?

Lucinda Rojas Ross — And so when you do that, it’s you’re able to have just ah another little connection. Of course, those conversations and those relationships are a huge part of that, but just another like input. Just a little spiritual health dashboard for you to be able to have an input into how can you best serve your church and what they’re walking through right now.

Rich Birch — I love that. I love the use of the data. What are that’s like you know being able to kind of see, like you said, an anonymized, but still the people that are following our church, that’s powerful data for a a pastor. You know, we often come up to this, even this time a year, lots of churches are thinking about what are we going preach on next year? What’s our calendar going to look at? Well let’s actually try to pull out some data from you know the YouVersion app to understand what our people are wrestling with.

Rich Birch — How are some pastors or teams use that data to better shepherd their people? What’s that actually look like, if you give examples of what that’s what that looks like at a church level?

Lucinda Rojas Ross — Yeah, think one is helping people connect to each other. And so being able to do Bible plans together. So I think that’s a good, like there’s an example there. But I also think you know finding that data just to think about what what might um what might my sermons look like? What might my series look like?

Lucinda Rojas Ross — What, or you know, if people are really interested in finding community, like that’s something that it looks like they’re, they’re really interested in. Okay, so how do I help them get more connected, rather than it be something that they, they see, and they go seek out, how do I put it in front of them.

Lucinda Rojas Ross — So I think those are the kinds of things of like, just picking up on those threads. And so there’s lots of there’s lots of, of of inputs that we can take. But I think it’s just really, okay, how can I combine what I’m seeing, the data in front of me, what what people are actually doing. Or you know even just their their frequency of engagement in the app? Like how can I know, okay, that’s they they’re doing well, or I can challenge them to more. And so I think in being able to see that, take those, you know that prayer, Holy Spirit guidance on, okay, now now where? How do I lead my congregation? How do I shepherd my flock moving forward?

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. And this is softball question here. So I’m a church. I want to set up my my church page. How much is that going to cost me? I know there’s like, that’s going to cost a lot of money. This kind of technology you’re talking about, reading plans, connecting our people, getting that all costs sounds like money. What’s it costing me?

Lucinda Rojas Ross — Absolutely nothing. It always is free, will be free. And I think that’s the the piece of of the generosity of people all over the world to really see the vision of getting God’s word everywhere to be able to enable us to be able to do this for free. And so to be able to give it away, like that is that is the heart of of of who we are as a church, as a ministry, but it’s not without the generosity of of of believers all over the world.

Rich Birch — Yeah, if you’ve ever done, friends, if you’re listening and ever done any app development work for phones or even just like web apps, it’s complex to do and to maintain and keep running. And at the scale that this app runs at is insane to be able to keep this thing you know up and running and so smooth. The fact that you can open the app every time and it works, like it’s insane at the scale that you guys are operating at.

Rich Birch — Well, Global Bible Month is here in November. How can churches leverage that moment to to kind of build better healthy spiritual rhythms in their people? How could we, this kind of an interesting month, I’ve never, I don’t know, um maybe I’ve been so under the rock somewhere. where I’ve never heard of Global Bible Month except for, I don’t know, I’ve been following you guys and you’re talking about it, which is great. So how how could we leverage this as an opportunity? What are some things we could do to try to encourage this, encourage Bible reading in our people this month?

Lucinda Rojas Ross — Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s so as we saw, as we I mentioned earlier, just as we’re coming up on a billion installs, we looked at not just how do we celebrate ourselves? Like that’s not who we are what we’re about. We’re actually terrible at celebrating ourselves. That’s that’s so a point of weakness. But we recognized that this is a moment for the Bible. This is and one of billions of reasons that God’s word is is alive and active. And just like I said, the momentum that is building around it.

Lucinda Rojas Ross — And so as we looked ahead and thought about, okay, we’re going to reach this milestone. How do we just point everyone to the Bible? We’ve actually gotten to partner with lots of other ministries, organizations, other apps, Glorify, Hallow, who we’re all on board for Global Bible Month. Like we are celebrating the Bible. And one of the big ways that we’re doing that is through the 30-day Bible challenge. So 30-day challenge.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Lucinda Rojas Ross — So what we’re encouraging people to do, and I would love for pastors to really you know encourage and challenge our churches in this way is is maybe that you’re someone who is just inconsistent. You’re in and out. You kind of really try, but it’s just not really stuck. That habit hasn’t quite clicked. Or um even all the way to the end of like, you know, I’ve tried so many other things. I don’t even know really what what I believe. I’m you know I’m doing meditation, mindfulness, all the things. Why don’t I give the Bible a chance?

Lucinda Rojas Ross — So that huge spectrum of people, so encouraging the people who are in his word to keep going, to inspire, share, the people who make it consistent or the people just to give it a try, 30 days, every single day of November.

Rich Birch — Right.

Lucinda Rojas Ross — Open the Bible, experience God’s word and see what happens.

Rich Birch — Right.

Lucinda Rojas Ross — And that’s really like the heart of the challenge and and challenging people both to take it for themselves, but just to invite people around them to do it too. And so it’s been really exciting to see how many people are already committing to it. And we’re just, at you know, we’re still like a little over a month or about a month away. And so it’s exciting to see. And we know, we know that God’s going to do something really special through this. And so just rallying around, getting people to commit and to build that habit.

Lucinda Rojas Ross — We know, um we’ve all seen studies about it takes about three weeks to build a habit, like that 30 days. That’s on purpose. Like get you get through 30 days, like you’ve done something and being able to create that habit and build it into before January, before, you know, the times we think we want to make those habits, like let’s do it now. Let’s all rally together and and do this.

Rich Birch — Okay, let’s pivot in a slightly different direction.

Rich Birch — So um I’m a fan, and this, remember, this comes from a spot of, like, I use the YouVersion app. I love it. ah So this is not a personal attack. But there are people out there who, like, are really down on app-based Bible experiences. They’re like, you got to read it in like a, you know, an actual physical book. And I’m not trying to pick a fight here. I’m not trying to like get in an argument over this, but I’m sure you’ve had people say that. And I don’t know what to say. I just say, I give the dumb answer and I’m like, listen, I just want people in God’s word. And I’m like, I am like, I don’t know, like yeah I’ve seen lots of people get engaged when they use YouVersion and I want to see more of that happen.

Rich Birch — But what what do you say or how do you think about that, you know, that critique? It’s a weird critique to me. And it always seems strange to me when when when pastors, particularly when they take on, again, I’m not trying to pick a fight, but what do you think about that? Comment.

Lucinda Rojas Ross — No, I mean, no, I think that’s something that we, and when we talk about the 30 day challenge, so like just really quickly on that, and it’s not even a complete different direction. Like, honestly, it’s however that works best for you, you know, paper Bible. And that’s the other exciting part of Bible momentum, like the Bible engagement momentum. It’s not just what we’re seeing. We’re seeing print Bible sales go up.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.

Lucinda Rojas Ross — We’re seeing like Gen Z buying, like the, the, the fact that God’s word is at the center of this, it doesn’t like, we have zero, like, just engage with God’s word. If we are a helpful way for you to do that, great.

Rich Birch — Sure.

Lucinda Rojas Ross — And so when we go back and tell the story actually of of when Bobby Grunewald had the idea um to create the Bible app, one of the things he was trying to solve for himself is that idea of consistency, of like, I just want to be more consistent, but I like i wonder if technology can help me with that.

Lucinda Rojas Ross — And so as as you kind of fast forward through the story, one of the one of the things that happened along the way is we actually created a website. I don’t know if a lot of people know the story. We actually created a website first and people started going to it and then it failed. Well, this was in 2007. People didn’t necessarily have like, you know, it was like a a lot ah desktop experience. And so what he always says that always sticks with me is we moved it from their nightstand to there their desk, their desktop.

Lucinda Rojas Ross — And so what the Bible app, what technology helps us solve for is the fact that we’re not necessarily always going to have our paper Bible with us everywhere we go…

Rich Birch — Right.

Lucinda Rojas Ross — …but we also will have it with us everywhere we go. And we can engage in different ways.

Lucinda Rojas Ross — Some people, audio Bible is really helpful for them. Like that’s something that they, that’s a really powerful way that they engage in God’s word. Having the different versions, the languages, like they’re just different things that it solves for or helps with. But yeah, that’s absolutely not to diminish, you know, if people feel more power to if you. If you like your paper Bible, that’s your go-to, great. We love that.

Rich Birch — Love it. Friends, listen to, go back and listen to listen to their incredible communicator. You do a good job at your thing and you’re not picking the fight. You took my, you totally dodged my question and answered in a super gracious way. Not surprised by that at all. Friends, we just want to see more people engaged with scripture. We know that it’s life transformating. It’s just such a clear picture of what it means to follow Jesus when we engage in his word.

Rich Birch — And so let’s get back to the 30 day challenge. I think that’s amazing. Are are do you know of churches that are doing this together, or is there is there a way that we could encourage? Is there, would you want to send them somewhere to kind of be a part of that? Or I’m sure there’s a bunch of different people are doing reading plans on, on you know, YouVersion. Talk us through how can we get more involved if we’re like, oh, we’re intrigued in that. We should do that.

Lucinda Rojas Ross — Yep. So if you go to globalbiblemonth.com. One, we’d love for for you to send people just to sign up for it, just so that we can show. Like that’s the encouraging part of seeing that number of people who’ve signed up, seeing that grow and seeing that momentum. But beyond that, there’s actually free church resources there. So there are sermon outlines, graphic slides, other things that you could do to challenge your church in this way.

Lucinda Rojas Ross — So there are, we’re curating some 30-day plans so that we make it really easy. So if you wanted to choose one and challenge your church to go through the same one together. You could use, and you know, for smaller groups of that, you could use some plans with friends feature to be able to do that together. You can discuss it in other places. But really, it’s what it’s what you you guys as pastors, you know your churches best.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Lucinda Rojas Ross — You know um you know what you’re what you’re teaching on, what you’re walking through, and how your people respond. But we definitely want to make sure that those resources are available so that you can take that, run with it. But I think definitely just encouraging to sign up so that we can help show and encourage other people to engage in that way.

Rich Birch — So that’s globalbiblemonth.com. We want to send people over there and make sure they sign up, you know kind of flag that they’re interested and there’s some resources there. You can see various you know apps and that that are participating. That that would be a great ah first step from people.

Rich Birch — Well, let’s think a little bit about the future. As you think about the future at YouVersion, man, that vision of the three E’s and it stood out to me. I don’t know again where I’ve missed this, but somewhere along as I was prepping for this, I bumped into that. Everyone, every day, everywhere. As you think about the future, what are the questions that you’re that you guys are asking, thinking about the future, about how we can ah see more people engage with scripture? We definitely seem to have a moment now.

Rich Birch — I’ve been saying this in lots of contexts. When we talk about this stuff, I’m like, let’s not miss this moment. Let’s not just, ah you know, let this go by, but let’s try to build a new foundation for a future. So what, what does the future look like for you as you wrestle with, you know, where’s God taking YouVersion as we go next?

Lucinda Rojas Ross — Yeah. So I think one of the things, there’s there are lots of different areas that we are looking at, but I think if you just collectively look at it one is is continuing to grow, continuing to get the Bible to more people around the world. And that also has expanded into, we talk about ability and we’re talking about family of apps now. So beyond the Bible app, we have Bible app light, which is for areas with lower connectivity and less capable devices. Bible app for kids, of course, has been around. So continuing to build on those and looking for more opportunities. Are there other things that we’re, that we need to pursue in that space? So that’s continued growth.

Lucinda Rojas Ross — We’ve talked a lot about engagement. That’s a really important part that power for the idea of how do we create features? How do we continue to update the apps and and build opportunities for people to engage more? So if you go back to when we added streaks, which for some people is helpful, some people it’s not. But it’s it’s one of those things that it just helps prompt people to think about, oh, have I spent time with God today? And so really looking at engagement, how do we get people not just into God’s word once, but coming back every single day?

Lucinda Rojas Ross — And then another part of where we’re looking at the future is really um is personalization. So one of the things we found makes makes a significant difference in consistency is when people have the Bible in their heart language, so more languages, and biblical content that’s really reflective of their local culture or what they’re going through in that moment.

Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good.

Lucinda Rojas Ross — We can’t pretend to know from Oklahoma and the U.S. what someone’s going through on the other side of the world. So we’re actually um setting up, we’re we’re expanding, and we have actually global hubs where we have teams of people around the world who are focused on building relationships with pastors, church leaders, content partners, so that we can have more content in the app that meets people in their very specific context. So yeah, with the help of our partners, we’re now, we’re offering 3,600 versions of the Bible and 2,300 languages, and we just see that growing, especially with Bible translation efforts, accelerating. Like I said, those hubs, Latin America, European Europe, Africa, we have one Australia to really meet people, everyone, everywhere, not just in the context ah of where we are here.

Rich Birch — That’s incredible. Well, I just want to honor you and the team at YouVersion. You’re doing an amazing work. And, you know, this has been such a consistent player for years, you know, whatever that is now – almost two decades we’re coming up on, you know, of just helping churches and helping people take steps closer to and using, you know, engaging with scripture more. So just want to honor you and just everybody at the team that’s making it happen.

Rich Birch — As we wrap up today’s conversation, anything else you want to share ah just as we kind of close down today?

Lucinda Rojas Ross — No, just thank you so much for this opportunity. Thank you so much for what you’re doing, both on an an an individual level to lead someone in your small group to engage in God’s word, but also for, you know, using the platform that you have to help others, inspire others too to continue leading in this way. And so just thank you to you. And I think just um for everyone listening to just think about how can we play our our part in pointing people back to God so he can speak them directly through his word. So Just thank you for what you’re doing, for what your listeners are doing to serve the kingdom.

Rich Birch — That’s great. So globalbiblemonth.com, that’s really the punchline where we want to send people. Is there anywhere else we want to send them online to connect with, to plug in more? Are there places, if I’m a church leader and and I’ve heard us talk about all these pages and all that stuff, is ah might open up the app and explore is probably the answer, but are there other places we want to send that are kind of helpful for that thing that we talked about earlier?

Lucinda Rojas Ross — Yes. So if you are interested in getting your church um in the in the Bible app. And so it can be found youversion.com/connect is your first step there. And so that will open up. YouVersion Connect is where we would point um pastors and church leaders to be able to go find how how they can do all of those things and unpack those insights that I talked about. That’s your your best bet in that direction.

Rich Birch — Great. Thanks so much, Lucinda. I appreciate being here today.

Lucinda Rojas Ross — Thank you so much, Rich. Appreciate you.

Let’s start with a confession.

I’ve misdiagnosed “dead” more times than I care to admit…more than a coroner in a zombie movie marathon.

I have this bad habit of declaring the demise of trends that are, in fact, quietly entering their prime. I thought podcasts were “saturated” back in 2013 when I started the unSeminary podcast. Everyone and their cousin had one, and I thought I was arriving at the party too late. Yet, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Podcasting didn’t plateau… it exploded. It became mainstream. The biggest names in media…people who swore audio was finished…now build entire empires around long-form podcast conversations. Joe Rogan, The Daily, SmartLess…they didn’t just succeed; they defined a new era of attention. What I thought was a crowded space was actually an emerging medium.

Then, there were QR codes. I mocked those little pixel boxes like a pro. I remember my friend Kenny using them years ago, and I laughed out loud. “No one’s going to pull out their phone to scan that,” I told him, dripping with confidence. Fast-forward to 2020, when every restaurant menu, conference check-in, and even church connect card required a QR code. They went from “gimmick” to “infrastructure” overnight. What I once dismissed as clunky, and dead became the universal bridge between the physical and digital worlds.

And YouTube…don’t get me started. I was doing video podcasts and then 8 years ago I stopped because…I thought it was dead. I used to think YouTube was for cat videos and makeup tutorials, not serious long-form content. I said, “No one wants to watch a 30-minute video conversation on YouTube.” Yes,I said that. Out loud. Turns out, millions of people do. YouTube has become the world’s most dominant podcast player and arguably the most powerful storytelling platform of our time. The lines between podcast, video, and TV are gone. YouTube isn’t a side project anymore…it’s the main stage.

Even books fooled me. I was convinced the Kindle was going to kill print. I believed we would all be reading on glass screens by now, that bookstores would become nostalgic museum pieces. Yet, print continues to outsell e-books. Year after year. There’s something about paper, the texture, the smell, the way you can hand a book to someone, that we’re just not ready to give up. The “dead” medium has more life than ever.

And that’s why I roll my eyes when someone confidently declares that the “attractional church” is dead.

I’ve heard it at conferences, read it in think pieces, seen it in hot-take clickbait reels: “People don’t want polished anymore.” “The attractional model doesn’t work.” “We’ve moved beyond that.”

No, we haven’t.

Attractional church isn’t dead; it was absorbed into “normal church” …and the churches that win in 2025 are the ones that treat invitation as culture, not campaign, and pair it with clear next steps into community and discipleship.

Things don’t die; they normalize. They get woven into the fabric. So it is with the attractional church.

Once upon a time, these were edgy moves. Now they’re table stakes:

The point isn’t flash, it’s hospitality. You don’t get extra credit for clean bathrooms, clear signage, and songs that don’t sound like 1998. That’s the bar, taken seriously by newcomers.

Call it attractive if you like; I call it normal.

It’s not just attractional, it’s transformational.

It’s attractional plus biblical literacy that roots people in the truth of Jesus and his teaching.

It’s attractional plus gospel-centered teaching that changes hearts and launches new lives.

It’s attractional plus the active work of the Holy Spirit providing an accessible encounter with God.

Together, that’s what makes the prevailing churches magnetic and mature.

None of these churches are “all show.” They are disciplined about next steps. That’s the quiet variable the think-pieces miss.

What died is the idea that you can run a slick weekend and call it discipleship. The vibe-only era is over. That’s good news.

In 2007, Willow Creek (is it safe to mention them?) dropped a bombshell study called Reveal: Where Are You? … a data-driven autopsy of its own ministry model. The results? Attendance and program engagement weren’t producing mature disciples. Cue the headlines: “The Seeker Church Repents.” The hot-take crowd declared the attractional model dead.

But that’s not what happened. Reveal wasn’t a eulogy…it was an evolution. Willow realized crowds aren’t the same as change. They didn’t scrap weekend experiences; they added spiritual coaching, personal disciplines, and next-step systems. In other words, they didn’t kill the attractional church, they deepened it.

Nearly two decades after that study, the lesson stands: the problem wasn’t being attractional; it was being only attractional. The weekend is still the front door, but now the smartest churches obsess equally over what happens next. The critique that was supposed to bury the model ended up refining it.

Like most “deaths” we announce in the church world, this one was just a metamorphosis.

Attractional didn’t die…it grew up.

The enduring pattern with prevailing churches today looks like this:

1) Warm invite → 2) Excellent weekend (clear gospel, real people, real stories) → 3) Fast follow-up (text within hours, personal touch within days) → 4) Concrete next steps (groups, serve, classes) → 5) Multiplication (invite others, launch campuses, tell the story).

When leaders say, “attractional is dead,” what they’re often reacting to is an empty, 2006 playbook…production without a pathway. That model is dead. Good riddance. But attractional as hospitality? As to lower friction for outsiders? As architecting moments that catalyze invitation? These are not dead; they’re disciple-making foundations.

1) Make invitation a year-round sport.

2) Design for first-timers without dumbing down.

3) Build a two-week guest journey (from start to joining a small group).

4) Tie big weekends to tangible next steps.

5) Multiply front doors.

“Young people don’t want this.”
They do…if it’s welcoming, authentic, and purposeful. Gen Z and Millennials are showing up more frequently than older generations in recent data. The more we give them real responsibility (serve, lead, create), the more they stick around. [ref]

“Attractional churches are shallow.”
Only if you stop at the lobby. The fastest-growing churches are more…not less…obsessive about small groups and integration. The crowd isn’t the end; it’s the on-ramp. [ref]

“This is just entertainment.”
Creativity is hospitality. It lowers defenses, opens ears, and earns you a hearing for the gospel. The message doesn’t change; the method contextualizes. And the fruit…decisions, baptisms, transformed lives…keeps showing up where invitation and follow-up are tightly coupled. [ref]

I’ve been wrong before about what’s “over.” I said podcasts were saturated—now they’re a primary channel with staggering reach and spend. I said QR codes were a gimmick…now they’re woven into daily behavior. I said YouTube wasn’t for long-form … now it is the stage. I said print was toast … yet it remains king. My point isn’t to relitigate old takes; it’s to warn us against throwing out working channels because we’re bored, bruised, or reacting to excesses.

Paul’s counsel to a young, outnumbered movement in a pluralistic world is still the brief: “Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time.” (Colossians 4:5 ESV). Wisdom toward outsiders looks like lowering barriers, speaking plainly, and making the way back to God visible and viable. That’s not a fad. That’s faithfulness.

So, stop saying attractional church is dead. What’s dead is laziness, gimmicks, and vibe-with-no-pathway.

What’s alive…and working…is a church that gathers and scatters, which invites and disciples, that engineers moments people can actually bring friends to…and then walks with them toward Jesus. That’s not the old playbook. That’s the only playbook.