Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re joined by Bob Riedy, Senior Pastor of Church of the Open Door in Pennsylvania. After leading one of the fastest-growing churches in the country, Bob found himself facing a personal and professional breakdown. In this deeply transparent episode, he shares his journey through burnout, anxiety, and loss—and how a season of pain became a catalyst for healing, reflection, and renewed leadership.

Feeling overwhelmed by ministry demands? Struggling with unprocessed grief, exhaustion, or the weight of expectations? Listen in as Bob offers honest insights on burnout recovery, emotional health, and the kind of leadership that builds both soul and church.

Learn more about Church of the Open Door by visiting www.codyork.org.

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Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in. Today, we’ve got something really unique on the podcast. We don’t typically do. We’re looping back around to get a bit of an update on the story, particularly the personal story of Bob Riedy. He is the senior pastor of a fantastic church, Church of the Open Door, that you should be following. Bob was on in 2019 and has come back now a few years later for a bit of an an update on where things are at. At that point, the the episode he was on was called “From Plateaued for 30 years to One of the Fastest Growing Churches in the Country. Bob, so glad that you are here. Thanks for being on the show today.

Bob Riedy — Yes. Thank you, Rich. So good to be with you.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I appreciate you being on today and taking time and and spending some time with us again to kind of update us on you and where things are at. Why don’t you give us some context before we dive in? Kind of tell us about the church. Tell us about your role, that sort of thing.

Bob Riedy — Yes. Church of the Open Door is a church that was established in 1951 with a really unique story of of a church coming out of a mainline denomination and where a whole bunch of people came to know Christ. And they established the church, and the church grew very rapidly for probably the first 25, 30 years, then to plateaued, as you mentioned. And then ah somewhere around 2007 or ’08, the church began to grow again very rapidly.

Bob Riedy — I’m the senior pastor of the church. I’ve been here since 2006, and I’ve been in ministry about 43 years. And love ministry and have really loved my time here at Church of the Open Door. It’s it’s a great church. It’s a multi-site church and with a staff of about 45 people that really continues to reach people and see them experience life change in Jesus.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Well last time we spoke your church was named one of the fastest growing churches in the country, like we talked about. And a lot has happened since then. Bring us up to speed, tell us to give us the story. What happened since then.

Bob Riedy — Yes. So we, we ah you know, as you said, we were named one of the top 100 fastest growing churches in America. And we were really doing well, I think.

Bob Riedy — And ah and then somewhere around 2000, the end of 2019, we had a difficult transition with ah some one person, a couple people actually on our staff. Of course, the pandemic hit in 2020, and that was you know a difficult thing for our church, especially guys as a ah multisite, large church, and know how to handle that. The politics, were certainly a part of of of all of that as well. And so we got through those challenges.

Bob Riedy — And then ah in yeah mid 2021, just hit a wall personally and had to take some time off and, you know, get to a better place.

Rich Birch — So mid 2021, what kind of led you to that? You described the fact that you hit a wall. Talk us through what led you to the place where like, oh, something is not up. This is more than just tired. This is more than like, oh, I need to have a nap this afternoon.

Bob Riedy — Yeah.

Rich Birch — You know, there’s it was obviously more profound than that. Tell tell us about that.

Bob Riedy — Yes. So on Sunday, June the 27th, 2021, I woke up like I had for the last, you know, 40 years and showered, shaved, had breakfast and could not come in and do my job that day. And I you know went back to bed and my, you know, I certainly alarmed my wife. And I just said, I’m not feeling well today.

Bob Riedy — And fortunately at that time, we were still taping our services ahead of time and we hadn’t been live streaming yet. And so um you know I text my my team and said, you know you guys just need to play the tape today. But the truth of the matter is, is that I was just totally exhausted.

Bob Riedy — And, you know, that later on that day, my children who all attend my church, you know, they were texting mom, what’s going on with dad and stuff. They all showed up at our apartment that afternoon. And, you know, they they they saw that, you know, their father was, you know, just not himself, just just totally, really totally exhausted.

Bob Riedy — The first thing I did was call my doctor. He responded right away and put me on medicine and and whatnot. And you know I began to go to counseling, and I’m sure we’ll talk about that later on. But at that time, I really didn’t know what happened to me, Rich.

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Bob Riedy — I knew that I was tired. I knew that I was wrestling with profound anxiety, which was just kind of overwhelming me. And so I realized I just I couldn’t keep going on. So I ended up taking the summer off. And, you know, you know, by God’s grace, picked up again in the fall, ah but in in a totally different way. So it was yes, it was scary.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Bob Riedy — It was it was traumatic. You know, I mean, I was the yeah I was the Energizer Bunny. You know, I I could work I could work, you know, 12 hours a day and, you know, work weeks at a time. At that time, I was preaching, you know, six, seven times in a row…

Rich Birch — Wow.

Bob Riedy — …which now that I realize was not healthy, you know.

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Bob Riedy — But I think and we had had we had just experienced some loss on our staff, some difficulties and turnovers. I had had some personal disappointments as well. We had bought ah some property with our son and we were going to build with him. And we just kept running into these, um you know, walls. And and then we were I was, you know working at the church. And at the same time, ah you know working on these properties and stuff. And so there was um it was like a perfect storm…

Rich Birch — Right.

Bob Riedy — …of of you know exhaustion that that but really brought you know brought me to to a wall. And in the end, it really revealed that there were some faulty, there was some faulty thinking, there were some faulty ways that I was living and doing ministry that I think, you know, really caught up to me. And it it took me going to counseling and things to figure some of those things out.

Rich Birch — Okay. I want to put a bookmark in that…

Bob Riedy — Okay.

Rich Birch — …and come back to your understanding of kind of the faulty ways that you’ve kind of undone, but let’s just stay a little bit longer in the tension part. You’re a smart leader leading a prevailing ministry. And what you’re describing is I think what a lot of us find ourselves into, like there’s lots of opportunity. You’re, you know, you’re doing some investment stuff. You’re there’s lots going on.

Rich Birch — I had a friend of mine has said, you know, leading a ministry over an extended period of time is a series of unmitigated losses. It’s like things just fall apart in life and you just kind of, they just, they just add up and you just kind of move on. But can you kind of pull apart a little bit from the the side of the loss, the side of the pressure, kind of what what led to the the kind of profound anxiety? Help us understand that.

Rich Birch — I’m thinking from the perspective of people that are listening in that are saying, hey, like, ah we don’t want to get to the place where we’re waking up on a Sunday and we can’t get in. But what would be some of those signs ah that that you now see that maybe you didn’t quite see so clearly at that point?

Bob Riedy — Yes. I I really do think that loss and especially not properly processing and grieving loss was a big part of what was behind all of this.

Rich Birch — Right.

Bob Riedy — In 2018, I lost my brother, um my younger brother, who was, you know, really my wingman in so many ways. That was a loss that, you know, I think in some ways I’m still wrestling with. We, during the pandemic, we lost, you know you know, pick a number…

Rich Birch — Right.

Bob Riedy — …you know, a lot of loss as far as, um ah you know, attendance and stuff. At first, we were off for, you know, we were off for about four months. But then when we came back, ah you know, it was people began to trickle in. And it was clear to me that we lost hundreds of people, you know, as well from our church that during that time.

Bob Riedy — That was probably a profound thing for me. We lost some key staff members members as well, you know, during that time. I lost some friends because of the politics and some of the difficulty of that. And so I think loss was ah was a big part of that. My counselors really helped me a lot with that not properly grieving loss.

Bob Riedy — You know, Terry Wardle is one who said that, ah you know, ministry is a series of ungrieved losses. And and and if we and and I found that I I really wasn’t doing that good. I was shaking it off and just moving forward, shaking it off and moving forward and not really grieving it and and and bringing God into it and surrendering it to him.

Bob Riedy — And, and I think part of, part of what happened with that as well was I was, I was concerned about what people thought, you know, with we were, you know, this powerhouse of a church growing like crazy. And all of a sudden, you know, like every other church we were, we were struggling.

Bob Riedy — And, you know, I remember the day that, you know, I burned out that afternoon. My children all came to our apartment. My wife and I were living downtown. And ah my daughter reminded me of this the other day. And she said, Dad, do you know what you said to me that day? And I said, no. She said, Dad, you said to me, “What are people going to think of me that this happened to me?” And I you know, that was a that was a loss that I wasn’t, you know, I wasn’t able to really properly wrap my head around.

Rich Birch — right

Bob Riedy — And I was more concerned about how this was going to look, you know, with me as, you know, a Christian leader in our community. And and then I think one of the places that the anxiety came from as well was shame. Like one of the things the enemy, I think, came after me with was like, you’ve been telling people here in York how to live for the, you know, the last 15 years, and you let this happen to you.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Bob Riedy — And wow, I wrestled with that as well. And I so I think, you know, that that loss and, you know, worrying what people were concerned about or what they were thinking of me. And then the shame of wrestling through that…

Rich Birch — Right.

Bob Riedy — …as a senior pastor, you know, whose church had been top 100 churches.

Rich Birch — Right.

Bob Riedy — You know, I mean, I I taught church leadership and and biblical preaching at Lancaster Bible College. And, and this happened to me. And, and so I really wrestled with, you know, just the fallout of all that.

Rich Birch — Well, there’s a ton there.

Bob Riedy — Yes.

Rich Birch — I have I wrote like half a page of notes of like, oh, there’s so much there I’d love to unpack. Let’s start with the grieving piece.

Bob Riedy — Yes.

Rich Birch — So proper grieving of loss. I think anybody that’s listening in, I mentioned this already, like we don’t have to come up with a list of, it’s very easy for us to come up with a list of things that we have lost in ministry.

Bob Riedy — Yes.

Rich Birch — It’s like we’re consistently, that’s like a part of it. It’s what what did you learn about proper grieving? What does proper grieving look like for you now? How how have you found a better path forward on that front?

Bob Riedy — That’s a great question. You know, I think for me, I had to go back to the word of God and the example of so many people in scripture who experienced loss. You know, Joseph, Moses, Job, Jesus, Paul. I mean, it’s all throughout. David, it’s all throughout the Word of God. And, you know, I had one of the things I had to do is go back to just the the understanding that, ah you know, in the midst of loss, God is doing things in my life that he wouldn’t wasn’t doing when everything was amazing, you know? And so I realized that ah that that this was you know a big work of God.

Bob Riedy — I also began to, you know, study some of the people in in Christian you know ministry, specifically D.L. Moody, you know who lost so much in the Chicago fire. Everything was destroyed. And yet you know it was through that that Moody Bible Institute and some of these amazing things, you know, happened. And just began to think about, you know, Martin Luther and John Wesley. And and then just, you know, present day people who have been honest about their issues. Louis Giglio, Craig Groeschel, Jenny Allen. I mean, these people, you know, really, really ministered to me.

Bob Riedy — And I think another thing for me, another piece was was being somebody who really experiences and sits in the love of God.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Bob Riedy — You know, Rich, I have preached the word, I’ve preached the word of God for 40 years and I’ve talked about God’s love over and over again. But honestly, there were parts of that, some big parts of that, that I really never applied, you know, to my own life. And, you know, like, and I I remember Tim Keller saying, nothing changes us, you know, like the a deep understanding of the love of God.

Bob Riedy — I think as well, just reading, widely from people who also had experienced burnout and loss.

Rich Birch — Right.

Bob Riedy — You know, a young woman by the name of Bethany Dearborn Hiser wrote a beautiful little book called “From Burned Out to Beloved”. And, ah you know, she has a great line there: “Behold the one beholding you and smiling.” And honestly, I I didn’t ever see God smiling at me. Isn’t that crazy?

Rich Birch — Wow.

Bob Riedy — And I’m not a legalist.

Rich Birch — Right.

Bob Riedy — You know, I mean, I’m not a legalist, but I I really never, I think, really grappled with the gaze of God. The love… You know, the Bible says that Jesus saw that young man that time. He looked at him and he loved him. And so these were all things that I had to learn to process to help me understand that even in the midst of loss, I have a God who loves me profoundly and that is and that he’s doing things, that he’s sovereign, he’s over the loss. And just like he’s done in so many other lives, he’s working in my life as well. Those were powerful things, I think, that have helped me deal with loss.

Rich Birch — That’s beautiful. That’s beautiful. One of the things you mentioned resonated with another conversation I had. A friend of mine, mentor, someone who I’ve looked up to, super influential in my life, they had stepped out, retired from ministry, came to the end. And we were out for, you know, coffee maybe a year later. And I asked them, I said, hey, what what’s been your biggest surprise now that you’re out of the kind of weekly rhythm of all of this? And they said, without hesitation, looked at me and said, you know what? I didn’t realize the pressure I was feeling to speak on behalf of Jesus every week,

Bob Riedy — Wow.

Rich Birch — That the that the weight that that had on me, I didn’t realize. And you talked about, you know, this idea that a part of you you were wrestling with, you know, Hey, here you were telling people how to live. I think it’s the language you used. Talk about that pressure. I think particularly for folks that are living, listening in one of the things I’ve tried to do as an executive pastor, and I’ve tried to coach other people towards is, Hey, a part of what we’ve got to do is create space in the lives of our lead pastors and communicators so that they can properly carry that weight because it’s unique. It’s, it’s it’s very different than the kind of pressure I see many of us under. Talk about what that weight was like. How you know when you what what impact do you think negatively was having on that? And then we can pivot to whats what are some changes you’ve made.

Bob Riedy — Yeah.

Rich Birch — But let’s talk about that that weight particularly.

Bob Riedy — Yes. I think that for myself, I was I was carrying I was carrying weight that Jesus didn’t want me to carry.

Rich Birch — Right.

Bob Riedy — You know, one of the verses of scripture that really ministered, has ministered to me is Matthew 11:28-30, where Jesus says, come to me, all of you who are weary and weighed down by cares, and I’ll give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am, you know, gentle and humble in heart and you’ll find rest for your souls.

Rich Birch — Beautiful.

Bob Riedy — So, you know, like like I said, I was preaching six to eight times in a row. I shouldn’t have been doing that.

Rich Birch — Right.

Bob Riedy — Especially when I was trying to, you know… So I think I was so, it was, it was for some reason, I thought I had to be the person who was speaking. I had to lead clearly during this time. And I think I was I was taking too much of that on myself. And and it is a weight. And I should have been sharing that weight.

Rich Birch — Right.

Bob Riedy — To me that was to me, that was the big lesson for me. And, you know, you’ll see when we talk a little bit later here about what’s what’s changed. But you know I put it all on my shoulders. And and it’s crazy because I had a staff who was more than willing to help me. And…

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Bob Riedy — But when it came to speaking, you know, for God, and I I put that on myself.

Rich Birch — Right.

Bob Riedy — And that’s that was, it was unnatural. And what what what happened was, and I think this happens a lot with pastors who preach, you know, as much as I did. It was to the place where I was preaching truth. So I’m I’m I’m committed to expository preaching. So I was preaching truth. but But that’s about it. I wasn’t I wasn’t taking time to really let that truth, ah you know, go deep into my heart where I could preach from the overflow…

Rich Birch — Wow.

Bob Riedy — …of what God was doing in my soul, you know.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Bob Riedy — And I have to admit that.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Bob Riedy — I I I wasn’t a heretic.

Rich Birch — Right.

Bob Riedy — I was always preaching truth.

Rich Birch — Right.

Bob Riedy — And I think that’s a trap that pastors can get into. Okay, I preach truth today. I gave people truth. But if it’s not truth that ah we have really lived and um and that’s really made a difference in our lives, it’s not going to sustain us. I think that’s the big thing that I learned.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s, that’s wow. That’s profound. That idea of you were carrying more weight than Jesus was probably asking you to carry. And you weren’t sharing that. It’s like the double whammy of like, oh my goodness.

Bob Riedy — Yes.

Rich Birch — Well, let’s let’s talk a little bit about what has changed. What are some of those new rhythms look like? Yeah. When you said, you know, six, seven, eight, wow, that is a lot. But what, what are some of those kind of new rhythms in life and ministry that have been helpful in this shift?

Bob Riedy — Yes. So, you know, when I burned out, I went on medicine, Lexapro. And, you know, my joke has been, Jesus loved me. This I know, for he gave me Lexapro. Because it…

Rich Birch — Wow.

Bob Riedy — Yeah, it really helped me.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Bob Riedy — It simmered it simmered me down, you know.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Bob Riedy — I went to counseling. You know, I was like Carrie Nieuwhof, who said, I send people to counseling.

Rich Birch — Right.

Bob Riedy — And I was the same way until I needed it. I’d never been to counseling in my life. I found out that after knowing Jesus and marrying Karen, going to counseling was the best thing that that I could do. And I’ve had…

Rich Birch — Just before, how did you find your counselor? How did you talk about those? Because I think there’s a lot of people in the exact boat you’re in there where like, I’m not even sure where to start. I’m not, I know our church has a list of people I’ve met with and think they’re great counselors. But do I really want to go talk to those people? How did you find that person? What what does that look like?

Bob Riedy — That’s that’s a great question. I mean, here, thankfully, in central Pennsylvania we have and we have a lot of great Christian counselors. And so I knew of a counseling agency in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which is about 45 minutes from where I live. And I knew the guy who who runs it because he was a fellow adjunct professor at Lancaster Bible College. And so I didn’t want to go to counseling in my own city.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Bob Riedy — You know, I didn’t want to show up in an office where, you know, I know somebody and whatnot. I really needed privacy, you know.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Bob Riedy — And and so I drove to an amazing place in in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, New Life Counseling. And my first counselor was a young woman whose father was a pastor. And she got me. She got exactly what I was going through. And then she then she went off and got married and moved away. And so I II got another counselor. He is an amazing, insightful man. And so he and so he kind of picked up where she left off and, you know, really, really has helped me. So that’s where I started with a place that I you know, that I knew. And those those were really my two first steps.

Rich Birch — Right.

Bob Riedy — And then I I just began I began to read about what happened to me. The first book I read was Craig Groeschel’s book, “Winning the War in Your Mind”. I knew that there was something going and on in my mind that was causing this anxiety, you know? And, I took the summer off summer of 2021 took off completely. And you know, I probably read his book three times that summer.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Bob Riedy — And I read other books that really helped me. Bethany Hiser’s book, J.P. Moreland’s book, “Finding Quiet”. These are all books that deal with you know you know what’s going on when you’re wrestling you know with anxiety. And so then I just began to realize that I had a to I had to change a lot of things. I had to change the way I walked with God. Honestly, Rich, I always had my devotions.

Rich Birch — Right.

Bob Riedy — I have read through the Bible for the last 35 years. I usually have, ah you know, I’ve really been helped by “Emotionally Healthy Spiritualit”y by Pete Scazzaro.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Bob Riedy — And so I I was doing all of those things. But honestly, I have to say that, you know, I would spend that 15 or 20 minutes or so in the morning.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Bob Riedy — And then I was off to the races, man.

Rich Birch — Right.

Bob Riedy — And, uh, and it, I, and I wasn’t reconnecting with God throughout the day. And so that’s changed, you know. You know, I really do. I practice silence, stillness, gratitude, reading scripture slowly, contemplative prayer, I’ve memorized scripture. I’ve put one of the things that Craig Groeschel talks about is his declarations. I’ve I’ve put those together. And so it really began, I think, with my walk with God. That had to change. It had to be more profound in my life.

Bob Riedy — I think secondly, I mean, that’s probably third or fourth…

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that’s good.

Bob Riedy — …but you know after that, I had to learn to put limits on my time and energy. I had no limits, Rich.

Rich Birch — Right.

Bob Riedy — I had I had no limits on my time. I was always on.

Rich Birch — Right.

Bob Riedy — I never really disengaged. You know, I didn’t realize what Henry Cloud says, that the most productive leaders engage fully, and then disengage fully.

Rich Birch — Right.

Bob Riedy — I wasn’t really practicing that. And of course, the pandemic was a perfect storm for that.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Bob Riedy — You know, everything was changing so quickly. You just had to be on all the time.

Rich Birch — Right.

Rich Birch — And everything felt super consequential, right?

Bob Riedy — Oh yeah. Yeah.

Rich Birch — It was like every decision, every like what we do this weekend is going to define the future of our ministry. All of that. Yeah.

Bob Riedy — Yes. And then, of course, you know, you got the the the nasty letters from people…

Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah. Right.

…who thought you were capitulating to the governor and, you know, all that.

Rich Birch — Yeah. It’s a no win. Yeah. This it was a perfect no win scenario.

Bob Riedy — Yeah.

Rich Birch — It doesn’t matter what we did. People on both sides are not happy. For sure.

Bob Riedy — And especially with somebody like myself who, you know, was it was it was always important to me what people thought. I mean, honestly, deep in my soul, you know, that that was devastating to me. And so…

Rich Birch — So how how did you go from the always on? I’m getting a picture of you, Bob, like, and I wish it wasn’t a mirror, but, you know, ready to go, you know, making stuff happen. Always, you know, kind of jump into the next thing. I get that. How did you go from that to, okay, now I’m measured, I’m taking time to be contemplative, I’m practicing gratitude. That obviously had trickled down in how you organized your day, how you organized your week, how you organized your team, the people around you. I would imagine that would have seismic impact.

Bob Riedy — Huge.

Rich Birch — What what did some of those impacts look like?

Bob Riedy — Yeah. I think the reason why I did it is because of the trauma of burning out.

Rich Birch — Right.

Bob Riedy — That was traumatic for me…

Rich Birch — Right.

Bob Riedy — …and the the exhaustion, you know, and and I knew I had to change. You know, I I just knew I had to change. And and so the result of that is, you know, I mean, I’ve taught, I, and I’ve talked very, very freely to our church, to my staff, you know, about all of this. And and so I think that, you know, to answer your original question, just the trauma of that and me saying to myself, I don’t want to ever go back there again.

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Bob Riedy — You know, I can’t go back there again. And so, yeah. I think another thing for me was just the importance of good sleep.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Bob Riedy — Taking time for things that fill me. I never practiced Sabbath, Rich. I always had a day off. And so now I practice Sabbath. Every Saturday is my Sabbath. And I’m religious about that. And I love that time of just, you know, I exercise, walk, read, spend time with my wife. I don’t, I don’t, I try not to do work after five o’clock. I mean, in the past I was on my computer till 9, 10 o’clock at night.

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Bob Riedy — You know, um another thing for me was deepening my friendships So here I was, a pastor of you know, 2,500 people. I know so many people, scads of people would say, oh, yeah, I’m ah I’m a friend with Pastor Bob. But, you know, the problem is, is that there weren’t a lot of people who really I allowed to really see me, you know. And so that has, you know, that has changed.

Bob Riedy — And, you know, my counselor said that to me, my second counselor, Josh, he can be salty at times, but he’s he’s such a godly man. And he said to me, he said, you know, Bob, I meet with a lot of pastors just like you. And the problem with pastors is that you guys all have crap just like everybody else does, but you have nowhere to go with it.

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Bob Riedy — And so you’re all alone. And, and the enemy then just creams you, you know, with shame. And so I I learned that shame is lifted when you are honest with somebody about your issues. And, you know, I joke with my counselor. I said, you know, i pay you $120 an hour to be my best friend. But that relationship and then other relationships that I’ve but i’ve grown and worked on, ah that that’s just been golden, you know, for me.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, it’s interesting. Isn’t that interesting? Like I, you know, this is one of those, it’s like, it’s like what old guys say, but the older I get, the the more I realize the like friends that I have in my life that are really are friends. And there, I once heard a definition of: a friend isn’t someone that would call you and ask you for help. It’s someone that you would call and ask for for help. It’s like somebody that you would call and be like, and know that they would reciprocate without like, you can cash that in kind of thing.

Bob Riedy — Yeah. Right.

Rich Birch — And I remember years ago, I had a friend or a person was saying to me, like, how many people in your life are like that? And was like, oh, not as many as I would think. Like there’s a ton of people who, who would, could call me and I would help them for sure. But other the way around, I don’t know who those people are. And so maybe talk a little bit more about that, the the friend piece. What does that look like? How have you cultivated those relationships? What’s, you know, kind of what’s been helpful there.

Bob Riedy — Yes. So, you know, for me, it’s been I had I’ve had I had to be intentional about this because I knew I needed it. But, you know, let’s face it. I think one of the reasons why pastors respond the way you just responded is because everybody turns to us. And so we’re expected to be the answer person or the the one who helps. And, you know, we’re not good at receiving ourselves.

Bob Riedy — And so, you know, for me, it was it was like I have a friend here by the name of Andy. And you know, it’s it’s been Andy and I, you know, we we go for walks now on on Sunday. A lot of times on Sunday, Sunday afternoons, we go a state park and we just hike and we talk and we’re honest with each other about, you know, our issues. And, you know, we pray for each other, you know, regularly. It was, I have a a couple people on my staff, similar to that. Don, one of my good friends on our staff.

Bob Riedy — And so I think for me, it was, ah it was finally being honest with the people who are close to me…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Bob Riedy — …that, hey, I need some help.

Rich Birch — Right. Good.

Bob Riedy — I can’t, I can’t live, you know, the way I was living, ah you know, previously.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. What about your staff team? I’m I’m assuming that there was like a certain amount of restructuring. I know there’s executive pastor type people that are thinking about org charts and all that kind of stuff. I’m sure there was, because frankly, I would think as ah trying to get outside of this, the organization was taking advantage of you. They were they were overusing you and you allowed it to be structured that way. There wasn’t like a nefarious, there weren’t people sharpening knives behind your back…

Bob Riedy — Right.

Rich Birch — …but it got to that point.

Bob Riedy — Right.

Rich Birch — And in order for that to readjust, the organization would have had to pick up some stuff.

Bob Riedy — Right.

Rich Birch — So what what did that look like?

Bob Riedy — Yes. So immediately at that particular time in the life of our church, we didn’t really have an executive pastor, believe it or not.

Rich Birch — Okay. Yep.

Bob Riedy — Now think about that. So I was in too many meetings.

Rich Birch — Right.

Bob Riedy — You know, too many meetings. I was dealing with too many problems. And so one of the things I did that fall was moved a young man by the name of Jeremy in our church into the role of executive pastor.

Bob Riedy — And for him, it was a baptism by fire because, you know, I was incapacitated, you know, and everything just kind of went on his plate.

Rich Birch — Yeah, you figure this out.

Bob Riedy — You figure this out. Again, our other pastors, Pastor Don, Pastor Brett, they had to take a whole bunch of things. So that was, I think that was probably the key thing.

Bob Riedy — Another thing was, I you know we we weren’t live streaming at that time, believe it or not. We were still taping. So I was, at that point, I was having to put a sermon together by Thursday morning. And that was part of the exhaustion because I was trying to take Monday off, but I wasn’t really taking it off because I had to start working on the sermon.

Rich Birch — Right.

Bob Riedy — So it would be perfect by Thursday morning. And so if we could got it get get it in the can and send it out. And so that was another thing that we did. We stopped doing all that. And we ended up you know purchasing and and and putting live streaming in. That was that’s been, I thought that was a huge you know thing that that we did.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Bob Riedy — Those two things really helped us. And and then I just determined there are a lot of things that I am going to truly delegate and and not worry about. And, you know, honestly, I this was my fault. You know, I operated by this mindset that if I wasn’t in the meeting, you know, the right decision wasn’t going to happen. And that was, again, that was part of the faulty thinking, you know.

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Bob Riedy — And so, yeah, so those were some big pieces, you know, that that really helped me.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. Super, super helpful. So there’s probably, I know there’s pastors that are listening in today…

Bob Riedy — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …that find themselves either at the beginning of, or maybe in the middle of a raging burnout, you know. What would you, and there’s a lot, even just listening to this conversation, there would be like, man, there’s a ton there to, to unpack, but what would be step one for them? What would you, as a friend who’s been down this road, you would say, Hey, this, this would be, this is where they should begin. This is what, you know, what they should do. What would be a first step?

Bob Riedy — Yeah. I think the first thing I would tell them to do is to gather a few trusted people around them and be honest with them about what’s going on.

Rich Birch — Right. Yep.

Bob Riedy — Maybe it’s anxiety, maybe it’s depression. Shame. I mean, the enemy uses this kind of exhaustion to just come in at our weak spots. I think that’d be the first thing. Secondly, you know most of the time with with burnout, there’s a lot of exhaustion. I think I would go to my doctor and you know tell my doctor what’s going on. Thirdly, again, I would go to a counselor. That piece for me was was huge.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Bob Riedy — Because most people do not burn out just by exhaustion alone. It’s it’s the faulty thinking…

Rich Birch — Right.

Bob Riedy — …that really contributes a lot to it, you know? And so I think those would be the those… And then I think, you know, depending upon what your counselor and what your ah doctor says, you know, fourthly, you’re going to probably have to take some time off, right?

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Bob Riedy — Like for me, it was three months almost. And sometimes I wish I would have taken six months off, you know? And, but, you know, you need that time to pull away and to, you know, figure out what’s going on in your in your head.

Bob Riedy — Wayne Cordeiro, Cordeiro, I mean, he, he, he, you know, he had a burnout a number of years ago and he wrote a beautiful book about it. And, you know, in the book, he says, even though you work through burnout, it’s it the woods, you can always see the woods.

Rich Birch — Oh, wow. Yeah, that’s good.

Bob Riedy — And so, ah you know, you you realize that with the the right perfect storm going on in your life and you not thinking correctly, you can always drift back to it.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Bob Riedy — And and so that that’s been, that was ah that was a great book that really helped me. I’m forgetting the name of his book. I probably have it here somewhere. But that book helped me a lot.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Yeah, I remember a couple years ago, a friend of mine, pastor, friend of mine, dear friend, was was in, you know, was in pretty burnt out state and was pursued their board over like, hey, I need to take some time. And so this friend, I thought, did the brave thing and came to me and said, hey, I need you to help me advocate for myself to my board. Like I need… And I was like, let me at them! You know, like, you know, and and the board wasn’t, the board was very supportive. Like it was not, that they they wondered, you know, hey, what my friend wondered, I wonder what that’s going to be like. And they were, in the end, it was really, I was kind of a non-job. I didn’t have to really do much.

Rich Birch — I but really, I as another pastor, I felt it an honor to stand by my friend and say, you you know, you need to take that time.

Bob Riedy — Yeah.

Rich Birch — And they similarly, you know, they were thinking about, well, maybe I’ll take six weeks. And I was like, man, I think you’ve got to start with at least three months.

Bob Riedy — Yeah.

Rich Birch — If not more. And, you know, they were a teaching pastor, are a teaching pastor of a church. And and I and I was like, I spoke was trying to speak on behalf of the church. I said, selfishly from the church’s perspective, we need you to be healthy. We need you to go away and then come back in a better place. And then there’ll be many years ahead that we can repattern all this stuff.

Bob Riedy — Right. Right.

Rich Birch — But if we if we don’t address this now, man, there’s we have the there’s just a train wreckage of people out there that this has gone sideways on.

Bob Riedy — Yeah. Amen.

Rich Birch — So yeah, I would i would echo the like, hey, you you are probably going to need to take some time. And it probably sounds a lot longer than you need. It sounds scary. Whatever the amount of time, it sounds scary.

Bob Riedy — Yes.

Rich Birch — You’ve put together a resource. Speaking of resources…

Bob Riedy — Yes.

Rich Birch — …you put your together a resource, “Burn out and Life Lessons Talk”. Tell us a little bit about that. We want to make that available to people. You’ve been, I appreciate it – even today, you’ve referenced a number of resources, but here’s here’s another one. Talk us through that. What were you hoping about how would you help it would how would you hope it would help in the midst of all that?

Bob Riedy — Yes. Before I do that, I want to just put a plug in here for my staff, the board of our church and my church. They have been amazing to me during this time. If it weren’t for them, I would not be in ministry. Honestly, that was one of my big fears. What’s going to happen to me? This I was 63 when this happened to me. And ah I thought, you know, what am I going to do? And my church, people, I mean, the letters, the notes, and especially when I started getting vulnerable and letting them know what really happened to me. Man, people have come out of the woodwork.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Bob Riedy — And I’ve sent so many people to counseling as well. But I just want to say, to me…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Bob Riedy — …having such a supportive church and staff and board has been truly amazing. And I praise God for that. I’m actually in the process of writing a book. Probably about you know halfway done. And the resource that I gave you is like just a little compilation you know of what happened.

Rich Birch — Right. Okay.

Bob Riedy — I’ve given this talk, you know, in a number of places. I gave it at our church. I’ve given it to mission agencies, retreats and things like that. And so what what I’ve just tried to put together there is hey, here’s what happened to me. Here’s what I needed to wrestle through. And then, here are the disciplines that I’ve put in place in my life, you know, to get to a better place.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Bob Riedy — And so, you know, I hope that, you know, people who are, you know, wrestling with the same thing can read it and at least be encouraged to take the right, you know, the right steps.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I really appreciate that, Bob. And we’ll we’ll link to that. It’s in the show notes there. But I, you know, I know there are people that are listening in that are thinking through these issues. And I also just want to underline what you said there. You might be listening in today as a staff leader, as a volunteer, as an elder. And, you know, what happens is when someone comes with this kind of, when they’re when they reach out and say, hey, I’m struggling with this, what you say in the first 30 seconds really does matter.

Bob Riedy — Yes.

Rich Birch — And, you know, being reflexive to support and to say, yes, like we want to help you get healthy. We want to help you find, we need more leaders. Like it sounds like your church has been, you know, they were there. They, they helped you walk through it, help you get the time you needed. And then look on the other side, like you’ve continued to serve there and you know, it, it, you know, didn’t end up in all the negative situations that we have seen.

Bob Riedy — Yes.

Rich Birch — So yeah, it’s, it’s great.

Bob Riedy — Glory to God for that.

Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s amazing.

Bob Riedy — In fact in fact, here’s what’s happened. So now you know we’re on the other side of a lot of things. And I believe our church is stronger than it’s ever been before.

Rich Birch — Praise God.

Bob Riedy — We’re seeing more we’re seeing more life. We’re we’re almost back to our pre-pandemic numbers. But we’re seeing more life change than I have ever seen in 40 years of ministry. And I and one of the things that taught me, Rich, was that when when it it stopped being about me… I think there was too much about me. I have to be honest about that.

Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good.

Bob Riedy — There was too much that was about me. And when it stopped being about me and when I was at my weakest, Rich, Jesus was at his strongest.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Praise God.

Bob Riedy — And the church, I think, is stronger than it’s ever been. And it, you know, it took a burnout for me to see that in living color.

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Bob Riedy — And and we saw, I see that in living color and I praise God for it, you know.

Rich Birch — Well, and I want to honor you. It wasn’t just a burnout because you then went through the work to pursue Jesus and get healthy and readjust your life and and then walk through the other side. Like that, you know, God’s using that. He’s using all of that. And yeah, there was a time, and I I’m sure that you remember this time, where I think people were looking for religious leaders that seemed superhuman, that were like, those people are they’re transcendent. They’re like totally different than us, but that just isn’t the case. People today, they’re wanting someone, their question they’re asking isn’t, is it true? They’re saying, does it work? And they’re they’re looking at you as you go through that and say, wow, like it it’s changed Bob. And man, if it can change Bob, maybe it can change me. And so that doesn’t surprise me at all. That doesn’t surprise me at all that you’re seeing the kind of impact in your community. Because at the end of the day, people want that.

Bob Riedy — They do.

Rich Birch — I think too many of us, we build up these walls around us where it’s like, oh, I don’t want to let you in. But actually, ironically, I think that’s the thing that that ultimately Jesus is asking us to do.

Bob Riedy — Yeah. Amen.

Rich Birch — Well, Bob, this has been amazing. Where, I want people to connect with you, to connect with the church. Where do we want to send people online?

Bob Riedy — Yes, they can go to codyork.org. And that’s our church’s website. And really everything ah is on there that people can…

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Bob Riedy — …they can connect with me. There’s a place where they can reach out to me if they’d like to do that. But our resources and and all that is, is they’re all there.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Appreciate you, Bob. Appreciate you being on and just want to honor you.

Bob Riedy — Yes.

Rich Birch — Thank you for taking time to come back and and look forward to the that continuing story. Thanks so much, sir.

Bob Riedy — Thank you so much, Rich. God bless you and your ministry.

Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today, we’re talking with Quovadis Marshall (Pastor Q), Lead Pastor at Hope City Church in Waterloo, Iowa. Caught up in a life of gangs and violence, he became incarcerated at nineteen years old. However, Pastor Q experienced a life-transforming encounter with Christ through the Prison Fellowship Academy Program. Now he leads a thriving, outreach-focused church that’s deeply embedded in the life of its local community.

Is your church truly aware of your city’s needs? Are you engaging in a way that brings hope to overlooked or hurting parts of your community? Tune in as Pastor Q explores how churches can build bridges to their local neighborhoods and become known for joy, healing, and transformation.

Learn more about Hope City Church at www.myhopecity.net and discover how you can get involved with Prison Fellowship’s Angel Tree program at www.prisonfellowship.org/about/angel-tree/.

In this episode, Pastor Quovadis Marshall shares how listening well unlocked transformational outreach at Hope City Church. Want to do the same in your city?

We’ve created a helpful resource to help you take action: Inbox to Impact is a swipe file of copy-and-paste emails your church can send to civic leaders, school officials, nonprofit directors, and more — all designed to open doors for listening and relationship-building.

Get access to the resource if you’re an unSeminary Extra Credit member.

Not a member yet? Join now and get instant access to this and other practical tools for church leaders.

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. Really looking forward to today’s conversation. You’re going to want to lean in. This is going to be a conversation that’s going to impact all of us. I really think it’s we’re talking through an issue that all of our churches should be thinking about and wrestling with. And we’ve got a real expert on today, someone who ah is going to help you think differently and hopefully take some different steps today out of this conversation.

Rich Birch — Excited to have Quovadis Marshall with us. He was caught up in a life of gangs, violence, and robbery until at 19 years old, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison. While incarcerated, he became involved with Prison Fellowship’s Academy program, where a relationship with Christ transformed his life and gave him tangible skills to succeed in life beyond prison.

Rich Birch — Now, he goes by Pastor Q. At In 2015, he planted Hope City Church, a prevailing church, that you should be following in Waterloo, Iowa. He also works with Prison Fellowship today to advocate for legislation that changes the lives of those behind lie law are behind bars and their families. Pastor Q, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.

Quovadis Marshall — Oh man, it’s a great joy, kind of kind of a dream come true. Listen faithfully to unSeminary, read your books. Just man, love being here. Thanks for having me, Rich.

Rich Birch — Well that that well, that’s super kind of you to say it. That’s humbling that that you would you’d say that. We were joking earlier, you and my mom, I always wondered who’s the other listener. So, you know, ah that’s a great thing.

Quovadis Marshall — It’s me, it’s me, bro.

Rich Birch — Really, that’s super kind to you to say. Well, you know, your your life story transformation from, you know, incarceration to pastoral leadership to accelerated influence to just making all kinds of difference is remarkable. Unpack that for us. Maybe talk us through how your life experience ultimately shaped what has become Hope City Church?

Quovadis Marshall — Yeah, Rich, I mean, we you know we know the miracle worker. He always takes more than, well, he takes the little that we have of our lives, and he does a lot with it when we put it in his hands. And that’s true for all of us. We’ve all got a origin story, you know, you’ve heard the adage, every, every, every saint’s got a past and every sinner’s got a future, right? And so that’s true for all of us. Jesus got the bad end of the deal when he got all of us. Like yeah we we got the upgrade, you know. He’s the cute one in the relationship, not us, you know?

Quovadis Marshall — And so, yeah, man, I am born and raised here in ah Iowa, and in a good old Midwest, a single parent home, kind of run the gamut of, you know, poverty, grown up around crime, all those kinds of things. My life changed at 17, was in a crisis, knew I needed God. Knew… Let me say it a different way. Knew I needed something different. I didn’t know that I need God.

Quovadis Marshall — And and and that’s true. Every Sunday morning, people show up to our churches not looking for Jesus.

Rich Birch — That’s so true.

Quovadis Marshall — They come looking for hope and healing and change and transformation. And we know they need Jesus. So at 17, in my living room, cried out. Guy showed up the next day at my door. Door-to-door, old school door-to-door evangelism, that old evangelism explosion flow. And ah…

Rich Birch — Oh, hey, me too.

Quovadis Marshall — Yeah, yeah, man. Come on, bro. Come on, bro.

Rich Birch — I got two questions for you. You know, knock, knock, knock.

Quovadis Marshall — Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Well, you know what? That that shaped my outlook and approach to ministry.

Rich Birch — Me too, for sure. Yeah.

Quovadis Marshall — You know, I’ve got a philosophy. Don’t know if it’s true, but either you get saved in the church or outside the church. And that shapes the way that you view evangelism and the role of the local church. And I find a lot of folks who get saved outside the church naturally have a bent toward ministry outside the church because that was their experience.

Rich Birch — Oh yeah, that’s true.

Quovadis Marshall — Whereas those who got saved in a church setting, they see that as the birthplace of their new beginning.

Rich Birch — Right.

Quovadis Marshall — And so really, Rich, met the Lord. I knew four things that day. I was 17 years old. It was 1997. Number one, I knew God was real. Number two, I knew my sins were forgiven. I don’t know how I knew it, but I knew what I would do for the rest of my life. That’s number three. And I knew exactly where I would do it.

Quovadis Marshall — And, um you know, I like to say that it went from glory to glory, but, you know, I spent a little time building my testimony, in a as they say. And so, you know, you know salvation happens in a moment. Transformation takes a lifetime.

Rich Birch — Amen.

Quovadis Marshall — And about 18 months after following Jesus, I committed a crime. I robbed a store and I did it a guilty. Worst day of my life. Praise God ah that he’s a comma God, you know, he’s a but God, you know.

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Quovadis Marshall — And so ah while in prison, got connected with PF, but knew that I would spend my life doing what had been done to me, right? That God sees, he knows, he hears, he wants to deliver, and there are people who are crying out. And that’s why our churches exist in response to someone’s cry. God sends someone to answer that cry. And Prison Fellowship was instrumental in that change and transformation.

Rich Birch — Very cool. Well, I want to dig in today around the difference that Hope City is making in your community. And, um you know, you you as a church have really positioned yourself to try to meet the needs of the community, address, you know, real issues. When you began, what were the pressing needs there in Waterloo that you aim to address through the church’s outreach that you kind of said like, hey, here’s something we’ve got to lean in on?

Quovadis Marshall — Yeah, every every community, every city has a, there is a life happening outside the life of what seems to be good about our community. So your downtown could be thriving and booming or whatever, um you know, whatever thing it is, if it’s a college ah town, if it’s whatever it is, there’s always an underbelly, so to speak. And that’s where the need is. That’s where the ah physical, um more expressive need is, because we’ve all got needs, right?

Quovadis Marshall — And so what we did, um honestly, was we we tried to crack our our city’s code, our outreach code is what we call it. It was the outreach code of the city. Where are the felt needs? And we started with our school system, actually. We just know, I mean, you know, Gen Z, millennials, you know, now coming up Gen Alpha, um there’s obviously a pressing need for mentorship, for relationship. Teachers retired. This is 2015.

Quovadis Marshall — I’ll never forget at one of our social gatherings before we launched the church, we got done with the social gathering and we could hear sirens and we got the report that a little girl in our community had just been shot.

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

Quovadis Marshall — And that was a marking moment. It made sense.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Quovadis Marshall — That was a key trigger in that core team, at least. You know, only about 75% of them, you know, 75% of them will kind of seventy five percent of them will will kind of off load within the first three years, but that initial group, it got in our DNA that there’s a need, we get to be the answer to the problem.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Quovadis Marshall — And and so we started with our schools and then we started looking around and asking ourselves, by asking the people, not guessing, we started asking the people…

Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah, yeah, that’s good.

Quovadis Marshall — …um really, what are the pressing needs? What are the things you’re struggling with? You know, you look at data, you look at trends, Barna, ah who’s who’s great, you know they had just come up with a survey about our city being one of the least 100 biblically minded cities in the nation.

Rich Birch — Oh wow.

Quovadis Marshall — And so it it made a lot of sense to find the felt need. And that’s going to be different every city. Just the headline there is every city has got a missional code or an outreach code to be cracked. But then every church has a core competency where it can contribute to those needs.

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.

Quovadis Marshall — And it’s aligning those two things. That’s really where you see Christ get the most out of what it is he’s put within your your church context.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. Let’s let’s double click on that. This idea of really trying to learn our communities. And I like the distinction you made. There’s like, there’s the how our cities present themselves. And then there’s this kind of what’s actually going on. And that’s very true. You know, you peel back the onion and you start to get a sense of that. Let let’s, you I like that you talked about, hey, we actually asked people. We actually got out and talked with folks.

Quovadis Marshall — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Can you talk us through what that looked like? How did you, how did you actually engage with real people and understand rather than just like, oh, I think this is what the problems are. These are the things I think we should, it’s not even problems. This is how, is how we want to engage with our community.

Quovadis Marshall — Yeah, I think you know ah step one is um is is look for people within proximity. And so you ask the people who are gathering in your local congregation, you know if you’ve already launched a church. First, we were planting the church, so it was a little bit different. But if you’ve you’re in an established church, start asking those people. Do focus groups.

Quovadis Marshall — Hey, what are your felt needs? What are the things that make most sense to you? um Where are you feeling the pain? What are your aspirations? What are your goals? And I would do that. And you want to know how to really meet the needs of your families. Don’t ask the children ministry workers; ask the families in the children’s ministry.

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Quovadis Marshall — So so one, I would start with people who have the closest proximity to. Number two, I would I would start for what we said is we wanted to go to the watering holes in our city. We would look for the watering holes.

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.

Quovadis Marshall — And in the jungle, the watering hole tells you everybody that’s in the jungle. You know, watering holes are are demilitarized zones unless you’re alligators. You know, they’re eating anything and everything, you know, that comes near them.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Quovadis Marshall — But you’ll see antelope and buffalo and everything. And so what are the watering holes? Well, um a couple of the watering holes are going to be the local school system, which was for us, it is our our missional strategy, ground zero. Whenever we go into a new city, it’s the first thing we do. We look to partner with the schools. And all we’re doing is trying to be good news to them. And so we’re asking them because they know the most.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Quovadis Marshall — They’re interacting with all the kids in that zip code…

Rich Birch — Every day. Yes.

Quovadis Marshall — …yeah, every single day. Hey, what are you finding are struggles for the kids? What are you finding um families need? What are you finding are pinch points? Is it mentoring? Is it is it food insufficiency? Is it support for the staff? You know, honestly, asking the mayor of your city if you can get access to your city officials. That’s another great watering hole because they’ve got a great pulse.

Quovadis Marshall — Number three would be nonprofit organizations and agencies that are already meeting felt needs. And so instead of duplicating services, can we partner with you in the services that you’re already that you’re already providing.

Quovadis Marshall — And then number four, one of the things we did is started building rhythms of celebration, which gathered the community. And in that context, we got to build relationships and hear stories of people and what they were going through. And then honestly, you know, Waterloo or not Waterloo, but for us, it’s Waterloo. It’s your police, fire departments and asking them what are the felt needs of the community.

Rich Birch — Right.

Quovadis Marshall — And so again, every city is different. Some cities are battling immigration. Some cities are battling food insufficiency. Some cities are battling crime. In more affluent cities, they’re not battling external crime and food insufficiencies, but they’re battling loneliness. They’ve, they’ve, the thing, you know, it’s a lot of brokenness in the home because you, it it takes a lot to build a great business, right? It takes a lot. It’s a a lot of wear and tear on a family…

Rich Birch — Right.

Quovadis Marshall — …to kind of excel through the corporate ladder.

Rich Birch — Sure.

Quovadis Marshall — And so those felt needs are going to be more relational and spiritual than they are going to be physical.

Rich Birch — Right.

Quovadis Marshall — That’s been our experience because our downtown campus is in the heart of our city.

Rich Birch — Right.

Quovadis Marshall — It’s, it’s, you know, it’s it’s where it’s it’s where the crime happens at and in poverty and all of that. Whereas our broadcast campus is in a more affluent community. And so um you learn the different needs of just those social you know, socioeconomic demographics. And so, yeah.

Quovadis Marshall — But I do think if you will listen, I find it interesting, Rich. Jesus spent 30 years walking among us before he ever started correcting us.

Rich Birch — Oh, wow. Yeah, that’s a great insight.

Quovadis Marshall — So he had a lot to say because he’s the Word…

Rich Birch — Right. Yes.

Quovadis Marshall — …but but right but the Bible says, let your speech be seasoned with salt so that it can help the hearer.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.

Quovadis Marshall — And and so learning to listen, people will talk if you ask them.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I remember years ago we had, ah we were doing, you know, a similar heartbeat. As a church we wanted to serve our community. And what we had ah kind of charged our campus pastors to connect with the highest kind of official in, in their community that they could as possible. If you get to the mayor, great…

Quovadis Marshall — Yep.

Rich Birch — …but kind of whoever they could. And this one, I love this story. I had nothing to with it. I just heard it, which is fun.

Quovadis Marshall — Yeah.

Rich Birch — But the, um the campus pastor, one of our campus pastors ended up getting to the mayor in, in town…

Quovadis Marshall — Wow.

Rich Birch — And, and, let’s just say that this mayor would have a reputation of not necessarily someone who would engage with church people. We’ll just say it that way.

Quovadis Marshall — Right, right.

Rich Birch — And but the mayor took the took the meeting and our campus pastor met with them. And and the way we phrased it was we were saying, hey, we’ve got X amount of dollars and X amount of volunteer time.

Quovadis Marshall — Yep.

Rich Birch — We want to just serve the community. And we want you to direct us. You tell us what that, how you’d want to do that.

Quovadis Marshall — Yeah.

Rich Birch — And it was interesting that the the mayor, again, no right right reputation, leaned way back in their chair and said, you know, people come in here every day and are asking for things. They come in looking for stuff from me.

Quovadis Marshall — Yeah. Yeah.

Rich Birch — And he’s like, I’m not really sure what to say…

Quovadis Marshall — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …because it’s, you know, normally ah people want to get something from us.

Quovadis Marshall — Yeah.

Rich Birch — But the fact that you’re coming wanting to help me, I really want to measure this and think about this.

Quovadis Marshall — Yeah.

Rich Birch — And then they ended up, you know, it ended up actually, you know, flourishing into this incredible relationship.

Quovadis Marshall — Yeah.

Rich Birch — It’s amazing when you just listen to people, the difference it makes.

Quovadis Marshall — That’s right.

Rich Birch — One of the things you had said there was rhythm of celebration, actually celebrating with your community.

Quovadis Marshall — Yeah.

Rich Birch — That caught my attention. What what does that look like?

Quovadis Marshall — Yeah.

Rich Birch — How does that, you know, I feel like so many times we’re inviting people to our stuff, but that sounds not like that. Let me tell you, tell us about that.

Quovadis Marshall — Yeah. You know, there’s there’s um there’s two thoughts that you just reminded me. One of the things we did is, which is key, is we didn’t just ask the community what it needed, but we asked ourselves, what are we good at?

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.

Quovadis Marshall — like who’s in our church, right?

Rich Birch — Yes.

Quovadis Marshall — What what need are we um able to meet?

Rich Birch — Right.

Quovadis Marshall — Which which really built the relationship with Prison Ministry, Prison Fellowship. And so I would love to talk a little bit more about that.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Quovadis Marshall — But um yeah, rhythms of celebration, I mean, it’s so interesting. You know, Jesus shows up on the scene and they say, this guy likes to party too much.

Rich Birch — That’s true. That’s true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right.

Quovadis Marshall — Right, right. This guy, he’s always throwing parties.

Rich Birch — And lots of churches don’t have that reputation.

Quovadis Marshall — They do not, they do not. It’s like everybody in the church sucked on the lemon before they came. You know what I mean?

Rich Birch — That’s so true. That’s so true.

Quovadis Marshall — Yeah, yeah.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Quovadis Marshall — The psalmist says, I was glad when they said to me, let’s go to the house of the Lord. And…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Quovadis Marshall — Yeah. And I think we’ve lost some of our joy. And and I get it. Satan, you know, if I can, if I can go this direction, Satan wants to sap your joy because then he can he can sap your strength. Because the joy of the Lord is our strength.

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

Quovadis Marshall — And so churches that don’t have a high celebration culture at times, I’ve noticed, aren’t very strong. They can be very disciplined, but but discipline and strength are not the same thing. Discipline is is just…

Rich Birch — Dude, that’s good.

Quovadis Marshall — Right? It’s doing what I know to do, which becomes ah it can become autopilot almost.

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Quovadis Marshall — Whereas there’s ah there’s a real strength. Let’s let’s be the kind of church that when our city thinks of joy, when our city thinks of serving, when our when our city thinks of a life-giving culture, they think of us in the same way they would have thought of Jesus. Like they looked at the Pharisees and thought, no way. Looked at the disciples and thought, maybe. But the prostitutes looked at Jesus and said, that guy…

Rich Birch — Wow.

Quovadis Marshall — …I can go to him. Yeah.

Rich Birch — Dude. Yeah. Wow. That’s the reputation we want.

Quovadis Marshall — That’s the repetition we want.

Rich Birch — We want that reputation.

Quovadis Marshall — Absolutely.

Rich Birch — So so, what did that, what’s that actually look like? How have you, how have you tried to model that as a church in your community?

Quovadis Marshall — Yeah. Yeah, I think it’s, I’ll i’ll give three three ways we do that.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Quovadis Marshall — There’s three ways we do that. So one, there are some internal rhythms that we’ve created. I can talk to you about that, that we’ve done.

Quovadis Marshall — Number two, there are some external rhythms that we’ve created as in terms of things we do. And then number three there are some external communications that we intentionally kind of push out.

Quovadis Marshall — And so internally what we’ve created most churches live with the mindset of there’s three primary big days on a Sunday where we get to celebrate, or where attendance is going to be good and if we’re wise we’ll turn those into celebrations. They’re not going to remember what you said they’re going to remember how they felt. Right?

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s true.

Quovadis Marshall — And so I want them to walk away going. I really loved that. What I remember launch Sunday, realizing I had a moment of panic because I realized so I can’t make anyone come.

Rich Birch — Right.

Quovadis Marshall — I’ve done the mailer, I’ve done the social media, but for them to get up and get here, I can’t control that. And so, you know, and so it was the Lord helping me kind of get me over the attendance stuff and all of that. But what I did discover is that I can’t make them come, but I can make them not want to leave.

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

Quovadis Marshall — And I can make them, can’t, you know. I can build within them a desire to go, this is over, but I can’t wait to go back. And so most churches think about that opportunity, Christmas, Easter, Mother’s Day.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Quovadis Marshall — And those are the kind of three big days.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Quovadis Marshall — What we’ve done is we’ve built out 16 big days outside…

Rich Birch — Wow.

Quovadis Marshall — …outside of Mother’s Day, Christmas and Easter. And I’ll tell you what they are. It’s Baptism Sunday, Baptism and Child Dedication Sunday, our fullest dedication. If you do infant baptism or something, that could be a day. Those are big days. Those are big days, right?

Rich Birch — Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Love it.

Quovadis Marshall — Because we’ve trained our people, invite your family, bring them in.

Rich Birch — Right.

Quovadis Marshall — And so when they come in, we you know give them that loving touch, you know give them special seating, address them specifically in the room. Thank you for being here. Those are 16 different times. So that’s 12 because we do baptisms once a month. And then the fifth Sunday of of the year, we bring all our kids on stage and they lead worship during the offering moment.

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

Quovadis Marshall — Now, you know, as you get bigger, you got to kind of manage how many kids you can bring on stage, right?

Rich Birch — Yes.

But but I’ll tell you what, man, you you put little Susie on stage, grandma, great grandma, auntie…

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.

Quovadis Marshall — …the auntie, that’s not really the auntie, but this mom’s, you know, cosmetologist is showing up.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah

Quovadis Marshall — And so you get those 16 big days plus plus those three other big days…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Quovadis Marshall — …and it invites the family into a celebration. That was the question, right?

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s so good.

Quovadis Marshall — What’s the celebratory thing? And then externally in your calendar, you look at what are some big days. And so for us, we lean into Father’s Day, a car show, barbecue. We do a Fall Fest, kind of our version of trunk or treat. And um you know then you got Christmas, another big day that the community… And actually my perspective is I think more people are likely to go to Christmas than they are Easter.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah.

Quovadis Marshall — Because Christmas, Christmas right? It’s everything’s Christmassy. And I think you talked about this a little while ago. And then Easter is like, it’s the resurrection is Easter bunnies.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Quovadis Marshall — So those are internal things. And then externally, what we try to do is intentionally communicate what’s going to be a benefit to them, not necessarily who we are.

Rich Birch — Right. OK, good.

Quovadis Marshall — So the the the communication, when it comes to celebrating, is um we, you know, ah an example would be real time. We just came out of Easter, but we didn’t we didn’t put our numbers up. Right.

Rich Birch — Right.

Quovadis Marshall — We didn’t we didn’t say here’s the numbers from the church. I’m not opposed to that. But rather what I would what I would rather have us do is communicate a story of life change of somebody whose life has changed.

Rich Birch — Right. Right. That’s good.

Quovadis Marshall — Someone who looks like someone in our community…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Quovadis Marshall — …to kind of go, that could be me. Right. And so um creating rhythms, which really goes down to calendaring. How do we make an impact? And yeah.

Rich Birch — Love that. I love so much there. there’s a you know That was like a masterclass there. So much there about how do we create rhythms and using the calendars. That’s that’s so good.

Rich Birch — Let’s pivot and talk about PF. I love that you know you obviously were impacted, deeply impacted as…

Quovadis Marshall — Yes.

Rich Birch — …you know an individual by this ministry and then have continued to build this partnership with them. What does that look like for your your church? I love how you talk about, how your church talks about even your ministries into institutions where, you know, it’s like, Hey, we’re, you’re not a project. You’re not, there’s not, you know, you’re not just something we’re trying to do. You’re a part of our church. Unpack that. Talk us through, what does that look like for you? How have you been partnering with Prison Fellowship? What does that look like?

Quovadis Marshall — Yeah. Well, you know, there’s a little unique story in that, you know, I went to prison and and so while I was in prison, I went through the Prison Fellowship Academy. You know, the part of the story that really for us makes a lot of sense because it resonates so deeply is that not only was I in prison, but I left my daughter and her mother behind. And so PF in the local church came around them…

Rich Birch — Oh wow.

Quovadis Marshall — …and walked with them while I was in prison. Prison fellowship program called Angel Tree. And so every year my daughter got a Christmas present from her dad, but delivered through the local church. Now, the truth is is, I didn’t pay for the gift. The local church did. So the church…

Rich Birch — Right.

Quovadis Marshall — But the church didn’t make itself the hero. The church made me the hero. And so they said, hey, your dad bought you this gift and he wrote you this note. And it helped strengthen that relationship with me and my daughter and her mother while I was in prison. And at the same time, it it provided an on-ramp for my daughter and her mother to be a part of this local church.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that.

Quovadis Marshall — And so when I was released, guess what church I went to?

Rich Birch — Right.

Quovadis Marshall — I went to the church that cared for my family.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Quovadis Marshall — And so that’s actually where we started as a church family. We started doing Angel Tree.

Quovadis Marshall — Through no fault of their own, those children have been left without a parent, right? And the Bible says, pure and undefiled religion is this, to visit the widow and the orphan in their time of need and keep one unspotted from the world is what what what James says. One of my favorite verses is in Psalm 68. The writer says, the Lord sets the lonely, I think it’s 68.6 says, the Lord or or God sets the lonely in families. It causes the prisoner to sing.

Rich Birch — That’s so sweet. Yeah.

Quovadis Marshall — And so what’s the pathway towards freedom getting sent in the family? because he’s sets the lonely in families.

Rich Birch — Right.

Quovadis Marshall — And it’s in that place you get free from the things that had you bound…

Rich Birch — Right. That’s good.

Quovadis Marshall — …which gives you the freedom to do what you were made to do, which is worship. And so we started out just saying, how can we set these kids in families? And so we started with Angel Tree. It felt safe, right? It felt safe for our church to go, you know, I don’t know about the parent, but I can start with the kid.

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Quovadis Marshall — And, you know, then you celebrate those stories. And, you know, we do a Christmas party and the kids are picking up Christmas presents.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Quovadis Marshall — And, Some kids hadn’t heard from their dad in years. And you just you watch the joy and you watch the impact. And again, in the mind of that parent, the church has now become a safe place, not just a religious place.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Quovadis Marshall — What a place of celebration, a place of safety, right?

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that.

Quovadis Marshall — We we have our students help deliver the gifts to the kids. And so these kids are meeting kids that are their age. And so they’re building some natural relationship and connection. And you invite them back to kids church. You invite them back to youth group. And by God’s grace, you know doors continue to open to be involved in the things that Prison Fellowship is doing to help the church fulfill its mission.

Quovadis Marshall — I’ll say one more thing. You know, Jesus shows up on the scene, Luke chapter four, and he’s quoting Isaiah 61. And I appreciate the spiritualizing of the text. I do. I really do. You know, we’re all free. We all, you know, set the prisoners free, set people blind. You know, I love the spiritual, all of that.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah.

Quovadis Marshall — But what I find interesting, Rich, is he says he’s come, you know, to proclaim liberty to the captive, right, in the opening of prison doors. And I appreciate that. Yes, I need freedom. Yes, open those prison doors in my heart, Jesus. But then Matthew, you know, Matthew 25, doubles down. Right?

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Quovadis Marshall — So his opening and closing sermons are the same.

Rich Birch — Interesting.

Quovadis Marshall — Hey, right? Matthew 25. Then I’ll say, you came to visit me in prison.

Rich Birch — Right.

Quovadis Marshall — So he like doubles down on this literal reality.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah. It it seems to be more than just a metaphor. This is not this is not a metaphor.

Quovadis Marshall — Yes.

Rich Birch — There’s something about engaging with prisoners.

Quovadis Marshall — That’s right. Yeah. And and then, you know, because the foundation of his throne is is righteousness and justice. And so the salvific nature of Christ’s work was, I am guilty in the courtroom of God. I am a prisoner sold into sin. Therefore, who more could relate to a physical prisoner than ones who’ve been spiritual prisoners?

Rich Birch — Love that.

Quovadis Marshall — And then he puts an exclamation point on it. You ready?

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Quovadis Marshall — Who’s the first person to enter paradise with Christ?

Rich Birch — Yeah. The thief on the cross.

Quovadis Marshall — The thief on cross.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Quovadis Marshall — He goes, I’m serious about this.

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Quovadis Marshall — I’ve come I’ve come for the prisoner.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Quovadis Marshall — And I do I do believe we’ll see, you know, the joke, not the joke, the cliché statement is, we in America, we took the Bibles out of school, so God put them in the prisons. And ah Frederick Douglass said… right, right?

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.

Quovadis Marshall — And So Frederick Douglass said, um it’s it’s it’s um it’s easier to train the child than it is to fix a man. And when you can’t train the child, the good news of the gospel is that he can fix the man. And so we’re able to do that. And so we launched the campus and yeah.

Rich Birch — Yeah. So, I well, first of all, we will we’ll definitely link to Angel Tree. I think this could be, I hope there’s people that are listening in today that would say, you know, that that could be a step we could take. We’ve got time now to even line that up for this Christmas.

Quovadis Marshall — Yeah.

Rich Birch — That could be a real practical next step for churches that are, for leaders that are listening in.

Quovadis Marshall — Yeah.

Rich Birch — But let’s talk about kind of the the campus the campus, your work in prisons. What does that look like? Kind of give us a flavor you know, of that.

Quovadis Marshall — Yeah.

Rich Birch — I think Angel Tree is a great starting point.

Quovadis Marshall — It is.

Rich Birch — And and would be, like you say, it’s kind of a safe step for most churches.

Quovadis Marshall — Yep.

Rich Birch — They could, you know, every church that’s listening in could do that.

Quovadis Marshall — Yep.

Rich Birch — There could be too many churches signed up and they would still have opportunity.

Quovadis Marshall — Right?

Rich Birch — Prison Fellowship would fine would find kids for sure.

Quovadis Marshall — Yeah.

Rich Birch — So, um but let’s talk about what does that look like for you…

Quovadis Marshall — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …kind of when you took beyond that step?

Quovadis Marshall — Yeah, yeah. On on that note, you know, kind of ah as a pivot, you know, there’s 1.6 million children and who have an incarcerated parent. Last year, PF serviced 270,000 kids. The thing that I try to tell pastors about Angel Tree is it’s the easiest way to grow your church. And here’s why. You’re going to get the address, phone number and location of people in your community who are waiting for you to show up.

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Quovadis Marshall — Like if you can’t, I’m handing you a handful of families. If you If you can’t grow your church…

Rich Birch — Who have said we’d be willing to talk to these people. Yes.

Quovadis Marshall — Yes. If you can’t grow your church, you need to get into insurance with that number. You know what I’m saying? Like my brother, you need to pick a different profession.

Rich Birch — That’s great. I love it. Love it.

Quovadis Marshall — So, you know, so um ah so yeah, you were, you were asking about the campus.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Quovadis Marshall — And, and so for us, really, it was, it was, it was the, it made the most sense as a next step. Not all churches have a prison around them. But what we found was that there was a group of men in a prison about an hour away who had been tracking with us. And part of the the way they have been tracking with us is that some of the people who were in our church had committed crimes and went to prison. But also we, during COVID, didn’t double down online because Iowa is so rural that internet, like like I’m in a city of 100,000 and we just got fiber. You know I’m saying?

Rich Birch — Right. Okay.

Quovadis Marshall — And so like internet wasn’t the the winning strategy. Television was.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Quovadis Marshall — So we went to television.

Rich Birch — Yep. That makes sense. Yep.

Quovadis Marshall — And so a lot of guys started watching and then they started sending in letters is all they did was send it in letters. And, you know, the Bible says a person’s gift will make make make way for them and bring them before great men. That’s what it says in Proverbs. And and so we did the same thing as we did with the schools, with the mayor, we just said to the prison, how can we help?

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Quovadis Marshall — Are there any volunteer slots? And and so that door opened we started partnering with Prison Fellowship Academy that’s already in that prison. So they were really the gatekeeper for us to get into the prison. And kind of full circle now we’ve we’ve been in that prison about a year.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Quovadis Marshall — And about 100 men gather every Sunday morning.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Quovadis Marshall — We take the the teaching from Sunday, the worship and everything, put it on a thumb drive. We load it up. And they so they are they’re what they’re literally they’re worshiping on Sunday mornings. They’re serving on teams. They’re ushers. They’re greeters. Like they’re involved at a high level in the overall service.

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

Quovadis Marshall — And then many of them are getting baptized even, you know.

Rich Birch — Wow. Praise God.

Quovadis Marshall — Yeah, they’re getting baptized. And I think about 30 guys have been baptized since we launched the campus. And so they’re a small group. I mean, everything we’re doing as a church outside the prison, we’re doing in the prison. And and so, because the truth of the matter is, is like ah Hebrews 13 says, remember those who are in prison. And if in for those in prison who are believers, if you could think of it this way, your arm or your leg, if you’re a part of the body is in prison. Right.

Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.

Quovadis Marshall — And 95 percent of those men and women in prison will be released.

Rich Birch — Right.

Quovadis Marshall — And so the question isn’t, are they coming home? But but but who’s who’s coming home?

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Quovadis Marshall — Have they met Jesus? Have they found life-giving community?

Rich Birch — Right.

Quovadis Marshall — And so by God’s grace, it’s a thriving community. We’re so grateful to be in those prisons and and a part of what’s happening there. We love those men. And in Prison Fellowship, honestly, they opened the door for us to to be able to do that.

Rich Birch — Yeah, love that. Well, I love that. And that, you know, could be a natural extension. You know, I know that the, I don’t know a lot about the prison system, but I don’t do know one thing I do know it’s designed for isolation, even where they put these things…

Quovadis Marshall — Yes.

Rich Birch — …they put them way far out in the middle of nowhere.

Quovadis Marshall — Yes.

Rich Birch — So it’s hard for people to get to them.

Quovadis Marshall — Yeah.

Rich Birch — It’s hard for, you know, families to get there.

Quovadis Marshall — Right.

Rich Birch — And the fact that your church is, you know, making that effort to be there week in week out is incredible. I know that that would be life giving ah to folks that are, you know, that are there in that, in that prison. So that’s incredible. So thank you for, for doing that.

Quovadis Marshall — Yeah, it is. And I think it’s mobilizing to our churches. I think we underestimate ah people’s desire to make a difference at times. I think there was a thought process coming in the nineties with churches where let’s not ask a lot from them. Let’s give them a lot of anonymity. Let’s, you know, let’s kind of let them kind of find the way. And that’s great. And I’m all for that. I don’t think you have to, I don’t think you have to choose between attractional or missional. There is the, there is the, the attractional model is the Nathaniel or Philip to Nathaniel, come and see. Right?

Rich Birch — Yep.

Quovadis Marshall — He says, hey, man, just come and see.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Quovadis Marshall — And I appreciate that. But Jesus said, go and tell.

Rich Birch — Amen, amen.

Quovadis Marshall — You know, and so and so i don’t think you have to choose between the two. And as I look at Jesus’s model for for ministry, it was high invitation. Anybody can come. But then it was high challenge. You know, you got to drink my flesh, you eat my blood. It’s like, what? And and my mentor says, he says, and this is going to be gender specific, but the idea is not gender specific, just the analogy. He said, call men to play a man’s game and men will show up.

Quovadis Marshall — And and I think when you call people to make a difference, you know, I tell our church, I said, hey i’m not trying to I’m not trying to make you safe. I’m trying to make you dangerous. Like, I want you to be a force for God’s kingdom. And not all people buy in, but those who do change the world.

Quovadis Marshall — And eventually that middle group, you know, those kind of, you know, you’ve always got the the early adopters, you’ve got the middle group and then you got those that are not coming. That middle group will start to follow as you celebrate what you’re doing and life change and all that.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. That’s so great. Well, when you look to the future, kind of up over to the horizon, what aspirations? Where’s kind of the, what are the questions you’re asking? You’re thinking about the future at Hope City Church and its role in your community. What what would be some of those things you’re wondering about as you look to the future?

Quovadis Marshall — Bro, ah man, it’s been great. It’s been great. Yeah, we like to say we’re big plate people. And so I like ah I like my food falling off my plate. And so we just we’ve just got into our broadcast facility and we’ve kind of we’ve outgrown it.

Rich Birch — Nice.

Quovadis Marshall — So now we’re trying to figure out what to do next. And you know, so for sure, campus launches, you know, there’s a plan, there’s a strategy to launch campuses throughout throughout the state.

Rich Birch — Great.

Quovadis Marshall — There’s some favor there. Getting to more prisons, for sure, but also building that leadership pipeline. You need resources, leaders, and vision. And so those three things you’re always working on as a point leader. So, um yeah, man, the future’s bright. God is good. The the gospel must go forth. And he’s with us, man. So let’s let’s get after it, baby.

Rich Birch — Love it. Let’s get after it.

Quovadis Marshall — Yeah.

Rich Birch — So good.

Quovadis Marshall — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Well, any final words just as we wrap up today’s episode?

Quovadis Marshall — Well, one, I want to just honor you and tell you thank you.

Rich Birch — Oh, thanks, man.

Quovadis Marshall — Honestly, you you didn’t know me up until 45 minutes ago, but but for years, Rich, I’ve listened to your podcast faithfully…

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

Quovadis Marshall — …to be stretched, to be to be challenged, to learn new insights, getting things from you and the people you have on that I couldn’t get anywhere else. So just honestly, sincerely, thank you for that.

Rich Birch — Thank you.

Quovadis Marshall — The other thing I say is that, man, I just encourage churches like, man, guys, we’ve got the good news of the gospel…

Rich Birch — Amen.

Quovadis Marshall — …and we have an opportunity to impact the world. And shameless plug, Prison Fellowship has been the easiest. All the other stuff I talked about, we had to build.

Rich Birch — Right.

Quovadis Marshall — We had to put the structure behind. We, you know, have to develop the leaders for.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Quovadis Marshall — I don’t have to do that with Prison Fellowship.

Rich Birch — Right.

Quovadis Marshall — It’s literally plug and play.

Rich Birch — Right.

Quovadis Marshall — And it’s been transformational in terms of lives being touched. It’s been transformational in mobilizing our church. And it’s been transformational in our reputation in the city as the good news people.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Quovadis Marshall — So ah get plugged in. Keep listening to Rich’s podcast. Buy Church Growth Flywheel, and like let’s get it.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Love it. Love it. Thanks so much, Pastor Q. Appreciate the, really appreciate the kind words. That’s so nice of you. Where do we want to send people online? We’ll link to Prison Fellowship, specifically to Angel Tree, just to make it super easy for people to take that step. But you should check out Prison Fellowship in general. Anywhere else we want to send them online to track with you or with the church?

Quovadis Marshall — Yeah, yeah, you can check out, ah you can follow me on socials, Quovadis Marshall, Q-U-O-V-A-D-I-S Marshall on Instagram. I’m I’m pretty active on there. Go to our website, myhopecity.net. Yeah, and you’ll find some links to some other stuff I get to do, coaching. And I wrote a book a little while ago.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Quovadis Marshall — And ah yeah, man, I love I love to connect with you guys.

Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much. Appreciate you being here today.

Quovadis Marshall — Thank you.

Thanks for joining us at the unSeminary podcast. In this episode of the unSeminary Podcast, we’re joined by Danny Anderson, Lead Pastor of Emmanuel Church in Indiana, and Rachel Long, founder of the Joshua Center. They share their story of navigating a significant transition when Rachel moved from being the Executive Pastor at Emmanuel Church to working full time for the Joshua Center, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting grieving children and families.

Is your church facing the challenge of a key staff member transition? Wondering how to handle leadership changes in a way that honors both the individual and the mission? Tune in as Danny and Rachel discuss the importance of fostering a healthy organizational culture where open communication and support can thrive, especially during times of transition.

To learn more about Joshua Center, visit them on their website at www.joshuacenter.org and reach out to Rachel Long here. You can follow along with Danny Anderson on Instagram @dannyanderson23 and check out the Church Growth Unleashed conference at churchgrowthunleashed.org and the podcast here.

Listen to previous unSeminary podcasts featuring Danny Anderson or Rachel Long:

This episode is all about leaving well — and we’ve created a practical resource to help your church do just that.

Whether you’re a lead pastor, executive pastor, or team leader, the Staff Exit Debrief Template gives you a clear framework for holding honest, honoring conversations when someone transitions off your team. It helps you celebrate their contribution and capture valuable lessons to strengthen your culture going forward.

This downloadable doc is included inside unSeminary Extra Credit. Members can access it here.

Not a member yet? Join today for instant access to this resource and more tools to help you lead smarter: unseminaryextracredit.com

Click here to join unSeminary Extra Credit and get instant access to this resource and more!

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. Really looking forward to today’s conversation. It’s going to be a really helpful one. You know, over the years I’ve had people reach out and say, Hey, you should talk about this thing that we’re going to talk about today. And frankly, I’ve resisted talking about it because I haven’t known what to talk about and how to kind of refer to it. We’re talking about team transitions today, and specifically two people that have been on the podcast before who used to work together that are now leading in two different organizations. And we’re going to talk about what that looked like.

Rich Birch — We’re honored today to have, again, Pastor Danny Anderson with us. He’s the lead pastor of a great church, Emmanuel church, a multisite church with seven campuses, if I’m counting correctly, in Indianapolis, Indiana plus an online, a number of microsites. They’ve repeatedly been been one of the fastest growing churches in the country. And ah Rachel Long, who was one of the executive pastors there. In 2022, she founded the Joshua Center that we’ve talked about before, a non-profit bereavement center for children and families. We’re going to link to all of that so that you can find their two organizations. But welcome to the show, again, Rachel and Danny, welcome. Glad you’re here.

Danny Anderson — Thanks for having with us, Rich.

Rachel Long — Thank you.

Danny Anderson — It’s an honor.

Rachel Long — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Why don’t we start with you, Rachel? Kind of give us a little bit of, tell us a little bit of your story. Talk to us about, you know, remind people that maybe don’t listen to every single episode. I know for my mom…

Rachel Long — For sure.

Rich Birch — …she, she will have listened to every episode, but not everyone listens to every episode. So ah tell us a little bit about you and your background again.

Rachel Long — Sure. Well, I started at Emmanuel Church after a season of being a developmental therapist. So I’ll start with the Emmanuel piece. About 13 and a half years ago I started working in Emmanuel, but before that I Emmanuel had been my church for 10 years. And I was a key impact team member there and both the students and in the children’s area. And so raised my kids there. I am married for 26 years and have three kids a girl and two boys. And so we had been at Emmanuel for years and years and so getting to work there was certainly an honor and a privilege.

Rachel Long — And in, like you said, in 2022 I started just part-time, you know, just part-time working founding the Joshua Center. And it is a bereavement Center for grieving children, adolescents and their families in Greenwood, Indiana and ah it grew faster than it’s we call it unfortunate growth, right? Like it’s bereaved children.

Rich Birch — Right.

Rachel Long — It’s not something that I’m like trying to raise the bottom line on.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Rachel Long — But so…

Rich Birch — Let’s increase the amount of breathing children. No one wants to set that KPI.

Rachel Long — No, no, no. However, I will say I’m happier that they’re here than the than with not getting help.

Rich Birch — Yes. Good.

Rachel Long — So my husband and I launched Joshua Center. It is in honor of my little brother that we lost in ’05. And when that happened, there was ah really nothing for my children. And then specifically speaking to grief, I had a highly negative encounter with a therapist. Now I will say this, my church was there for me every step of the way, my small group was. So they helped me get back on my feet and keep moving. However, I needed more mental help with it too.

Rachel Long — And so I went into what’s called delayed grief. And I don’t wish that on anyone. And it was about seven years of like…

Rich Birch — Oh, wow.

Rachel Long — …if I heard the word Josh crying and like there was no hope and healing. And that’s what Joshua Center is really all about, helping those families find hope and healing. That’s why we exist. And so it grew and grew and grew and I was spending evenings and Saturdays here at Joshua Center.

Rachel Long — And there just came a crux, a time when it was time to talk to Pastor Danny and he had set the stage. And I mean, just 30,000 foot view, it we were able to talk through what was going on. It took a little while, which is fine. We didn’t want to rush anything. I loved Emmanuel and would never cheat my church. And so. But Danny loved me and so he didn’t want to cheat me. So there was a lot of support there.

Rachel Long — So that’s like, uh, just a little snapshot of what has happened to us recently. And so over the past three years, it doubled the first year and has already doubled again since leaving, since my leaving of Emmanuel in October. So it’s more than doubled, but not tripled yet. So. Although thats that’s, again, not great news. There’s kids with grief, loss, and trauma that we’re working with. The the good news is is’s that they’re receiving faith-based interventions. So.

Rich Birch — Cool. Danny, why don’t you fill in the picture about Emmanuel again for folks that that haven’t, you know, that would that would haven’t listened to your episodes or don’t track closely with you who kind of tell us a little bit of that story.

Danny Anderson — Yeah, you know as you mentioned, you know we’re a multisite church in central Indiana, and I took over as the lead pastor in 2006 for our founding pastor and made it through that transition barely. And you know since then, you know we’ve we’ve been building a great team. God’s been so gracious to us. Rachel’s been ah a part of that from the beginning.

Danny Anderson — And yeah, it’s just been a ah fun journey to figure out the multisite strategy and reaching people. And our passion is to see people come to Christ and grow in Christ. You know, we we say we’re on a relentless pursuit of people who are far from God. And you know it’s pretty simple vision. And we try to you know basically use our campus model to to fulfill that vision. And so, yeah, I’m here with Rachel because, you know, she decided it was a little bit less than a year ago to to part ways with our church. And and that has been probably the best transition we’ve had so far off of our team. And we were and we were really super intentional with that. So, yeah…

Rich Birch — Yeah. but Let’s talk about that.

Danny Anderson — …that’s where we’re at.

Rich Birch — Why don’t we start with you, Danny? Like I I feel like so many times these transitions don’t go well. You know Rachel was a senior leader, executive pastor in your organization, and from your seat as the lead pastor, why do you surmise that that these transitions maybe don’t necessarily always go well. You know what why am I hesitant to even talk about this? What is you know what why is why do I feel anxiety about today’s conversation, Danny? Talk to me about that.

Danny Anderson — Yeah, I, you know, I think it’s a hard thing because senior leaders, man, they’re, we’re weird people. We are control freaks, we, we, ah we like we think we own people sometimes. They’re they belong to us. You know, we don’t want to talk about or even think about departures. It’s it’s just it’s uncomfortable conversation. You know sometimes we think we’re going to do the ministry with the same people forever.

Rich Birch — Right.

Danny Anderson — So we we function in that and that idea, which is not true. But I think I think a lot of it the tension around this topic comes because there’s no, kind there’s no, there is no communication. And I would say the first, the the first thing that helps that we’ve tried to do, Rachel and I have seen it. We’ve been together so long. She was together with me for seven years on the leadership team, but on staff for 13. We’ve seen three or four or five, six scenarios that just did not go well. So we’re, you know, we had this conversation like, how do we fix that? I don’t want that culture.

Rich Birch — Right.

Danny Anderson — I want the type of culture where we love each other so much, we respect each other so much that it’s okay to leave our team without there being hurt feelings or a feeling of betrayal. Or and so how do you do that? And the first thing that that we discovered is that you have to start the conversation.

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Danny Anderson — I have and it starts with the senior pastor…

Rich Birch — Right.

Danny Anderson — …you know…

Rich Birch — You’ve got to you’ve got to lead. You have to kind of like even I would imagine even that’s a gift of even saying, hey, like we want to kind of be counter cultural on this thing here. Like we want to be open to having that conversation as opposed to giving off, like people can read that a mile away where it’s like if you ever leave, I will cut you.

Danny Anderson — Absolutely.

Rich Birch — You know, like so even just being open, ah you know, to the conversation, I think is is that’s a big deal. Rachel, what about you?

Danny Anderson — And it starts it…

Rich Birch — Oh, sorry.Go go ahead there, Danny.

Danny Anderson — Yeah, sorry.

Rich Birch — What were you going to say?

Danny Anderson — No, I was gonna say and it it starts with get really giving permission to have the conversation and letting your team know that it’s okay for them to communicate with you.

Rich Birch — Right that’s good. That’s good.

Danny Anderson — And that you’re for them in in that ah because you’re on their team and you want what’s best for them. And so that is what I think kind of triggered the I guess the openness on Rachel’s part, but that that’s the only thing I wanted to jump in on.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Rachel, from your perspective, kind of unpack a little bit of what was going on in your mind and heart. Obviously, this was growing. And then it it looked like, okay, it’s going to reach a tipping point here. How did you you know, how did you kind of try to keep that conversation open? And what would you suggest to other people to try to broach that conversation?

Rachel Long — Sure. It is what Pastor Danny said. Before any of this happened the stage had been set by saying, like, I don’t know why people just throw a two week notice at us and walk out the door. If they have transitions in their life, like he is our pastor first. So he wanted to help us work through that.

Rachel Long — But and honestly, um I would love to say like, oh, I was so self aware that this happened this way. But the truth is being in close connection with Danny, like he knows I would have worked both jobs until like we celebrated that at my funeral. So, uh, that being said, he, he also was still there as my coach. So I was open and honest about like, Hey, this is growing. Hey, I’m working these nights. Hey, I need, I need to talk to you about this in my check-ins. And then there was coaching, just like there was coaching when I led the first church adoption for Emmanuel. I still have my coach with me all the time in it.

Rachel Long — So it wasn’t ever like this chomp. It was more like, okay, I’m feeling this. Okay. Let’s separate and pray about it for a couple of weeks. We come back. Okay. This is happening. Then he went on a study break. And so that gave us more time to think and pray and come back and talk about it. And it wasn’t, it wasn’t an abrupt quit and it wasn’t a quiet quit. It wasn’t, he helped transition me off of staff and launch me into what God was building in our lives. And I think that takes a leader that has a bigger than themselves vision, like a kingdom mindset. And it takes an employee that um that knows that even though it’s going to be hard and you’re going to have to make space for the conversations, you got to tell the truth when you know it, as soon as you know it.

Rachel Long — Yeah, I would say that um there was also some coaching around that too, like, okay, let’s look at this. Because at that point, your pastor’s looking into your life as this third party, you know, and but still with you in it. And they’re able to see some things that maybe you aren’t able to see. But none of it would have happened if I worked under a spirit of fear or like as an employee, if I didn’t feel psychologically safe to say what I needed to say, then that…

Rich Birch — Okay. Let’s talk about that issue. Because I don’t think there’s any—this is a part of, I think, with the tension in this—I don’t think there’s any lead pastor out there that believes that they’re cultivating an environment that is psychologically unsafe. They all say, every lead pastor, and I love the lead pastors who are listening in, everyone, we all believe that we create these positive work environments that actually, of course, just come to me, tell me anytime I’m happy to. But that isn’t actually what happens.

Rich Birch — When you think about Danny’s leadership, and then Danny, I’m going to ask you kind of the mirror of this question. But when you think about his leadership, Rachel, what was it that indicated, Oh, he actually means this. Like he actually wants to have the conversation. He doesn’t just say, Oh, let tell me, cause I think there’s lots of pastors that would say that. Oh no, come and talk to me. But actually everyone knows now that isn’t what we should do. What was it about Danny’s leadership that led you to believe, oh, he actually wants to engage on this conversation. He’s not he’s not scared of this.

Rachel Long — Oh it’s future behavior is predicted by past behavior. The only time that we’ve had issues that were significant in departures, there was always a chance for that individual to leave well. There was always a chance.

Rich Birch — Right.

Rachel Long — There was always an opportunity for that…

Rich Birch — They chose not to for whatever reason.

Rachel Long — Yes, you’re correct.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Okay. Yep.

Rachel Long — You also have to be the employee that knows that like you’re not working for a robot. You’re working for a pastor. Like they love their congregation. And so when you come to them with something hard, if you got to give them space to be a human too. I mean, like but you can’t just expect, oh, that’s what you want to do here. Let me write a a plan with you. I mean, there is back and forth.

Rachel Long — So I feel like I watched the behavior. I mean, when my brother died, he and his wife drove an hour and a half to go be at the funeral when I was one of his volunteers in youth ministry.

Rich Birch — Right.

Rachel Long — That’s not a person who’s going to say: Get out. This is dumb. What are you doing?

Rich Birch — At your desk!

Rachel Long — Like you’re fired; get out.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah.

Rachel Long — You know, like that’s nobody’s taking a cardboard box with me when you when you have invested so much. As an employee you invest a lot in the church, but also your leaders are investing in you. And so he’d already invested in me, why would he not want to see like a kingdom return on that investment?

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Rachel Long — That was that’s how I felt safe in it.

Rich Birch — Sure.

Rachel Long — Because it was always about me more than my product.

Rich Birch — Right. Danny, I’d love to hear your perspective on that. Like the, you know, a part of the tension in, in these, I think in these transitions to be, obviously I was kind of kicking lead pastors there, but the reality of it is our, we’re consumed with the mission. We’re like, man, what we’re doing is, you know, is so important. And for, and I know you weren’t the founding pastor, but you, you’re a long time pastor, long term, long time lead pastor. It’s even more so with founding pastors. And I’ve said this to many founding pastors. I’m like, they, you care the most about this. This thing started in your living room.You know, and, and they, the thought that anyone else would ever want to transition. It’s not that they’re evil people. They just are like, love the the vision so much and the and our mission, there you cut them and they bleed it. And and so they give off, ah inadvertently, they give off this like, if you even think about it, I am you know I’ll be disappointed in you. Are there are there things that you’ve tried to do actively to try to cultivate a trust environment, to cultivate you know a ah place where people would be willing to kind of reach out and talk about it?

Danny Anderson — It’s a great question, Rich. I think that we’ve learned that each departure is a culture shaping event.

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.

Danny Anderson — And so if you, how did you handle the how how did you handle the last staff departure? Because staff members talk to each other they’re observing they’re watching…

Rich Birch — Yep. Yep. That’s true.

Danny Anderson — …and so they’re they’re actually learning the culture of whether or not it’s safe to talk about these things from the last experience.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Danny Anderson — And so I I after two or three poor, you know, departures. I’m like, man, um I think we don’t we don’t have a healthy culture. We don’t have a we don’t have a culture where, so I’ve got to change that. How do I change that? Well, you know, the the only way I knew is is to start having the conversation with people. And in my mind, I had to make a shift um from these people don’t belong to me, they belong to God.

Danny Anderson — I am I have to be open-handed with Rachel. Every senior pastor has has to be open-handed with their staff. They do not belong to me. But that’s really difficult because, especially if someone on your leadership team like like Rachel was such an integral part of everything we did at this church. I mean, she had her fingers in everything, almost. And, which was a good thing. And so when she and it even when she initially shared with me what she was feeling, I bucked it. I’m like, oh, no, that’s not true. That’s not what the Lord is doing.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Danny Anderson — You know, we got to rethink this.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Danny Anderson — You know, I’m not sensing that. You know, but so even when I told her that, I even felt after that conversation like, dude, who do you think you are? Like you’re not, you don’t own Rachel. And of course, the Holy Spirit was working on me. And and and so I had to I had to repent of that. Like, OK, Lord, these are like this this staff is your staff.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Danny Anderson — And I’m more interested in what you are calling them to do in their life…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Danny Anderson — …than how they can help me to fulfill the vision of Emmanuel. And so I think a big decision is to decide in your heart to be open-handed with your staff…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Danny Anderson — …and give literally surrender them over to God.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Danny Anderson —And I know that might sound mushy, and but but that is ah that is a conviction that you have to have. Or else you’re going to get mad. You’re going to get ticked off.

Rich Birch — Right. Yes.

Danny Anderson — You’re going to feel betrayed. And then you’re going to once they share it with you, you’re going to be like, OK, well, your last day is Friday. You know you you you’re screwing me.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Danny Anderson — So you know let’s let’s get you out of here as fast as possible.

Rich Birch — Let me bite back at you or whatever. Yeah.

Danny Anderson — Oh, man, it’s so so toxic.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Now let’s double click on that, Danny. I’m glad you brought it up because I’m I was like, there’s there were had to have been a moment where where, I’ll put it this way, it would have been natural at some point to have thought, no, I want to steer this conversation back to, let’s serve Emmanuel. Like, you know,

Rich Birch — Talk to us about that internal tension. How, what did that look like? How did you wrestle through that? And then, you know, then you probably, obviously you came to a place where you’re like, no, like, obviously I think this is probably the best for, for, for Rachel. And then ultimately the best for us. Like we, you know, we got to believe that the Lord is working this out somehow. Talk us through what did that transition look like? I’m assuming at some point you wanted to kind of steer that conversation back. How did you kind of weather that as a leader, Danny?

Danny Anderson — Well, I definitely tried. And and and that was part of what Rachel said. We we had several conversations, and we created space in between those conversations to…

Rich Birch — Yeah, great.

Danny Anderson — …you know I would I would say, hey, I think we could work this out. I don’t think it’s coming to an end.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Danny Anderson — You know let’s let’s let I gave her some thoughts. I gave her some ideas. And then I let her have space to pray about it with her husband. And and so but then when I realized you know that that the burden that God had put on her heart for children who’ve lost loved ones and the experience that she had with her own brother, like this this is the work that God is doing in her life.

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

Danny Anderson — And I if I stand in the way of that, I’m I’m blocking, you know, what God wants to do in her life. And I don’t want to be that guy.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Danny Anderson — And so I think I finally got it took me a while to get there, honestly.

Rich Birch — Right.

Danny Anderson — Because there is, Rachel knows this, there’s a lot of work to be done and where would it’s not a, so I did feel that like, oh gosh who’s gonna pick up who’s gonna pick up all the work that she’s leaving behind?

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Danny Anderson — And so there was a bit of that you know, I guess the space, there’s a void there that t was left. But you know I had to trust God with that. You know like, okay, Lord, I’m going to trust that you’re going to provide other people. And other, you know.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Danny Anderson — So I just didn’t want to be that person that was blocking what God was doing in her heart, if that makes sense.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. I love that. I hope you’re listening in, leaders, today. I think what you’re leading us here, Danny, with even just the way you’re you’re reflecting on that.

Rich Birch — Rachel, what about you? How did you continue to lead? And you’re doing this in today’s conversation. So I’m I’m asking you to kind of think about this at a meta level. My my experience has been that you have continued obviously to honor Danny, to honor his leadership, to honor the place that you know he has had in your life and has in the community. Talk to us about some of those decisions, actions that you took through this process to continue to you know to honor the the place that that Danny’s had as a pastor and leader in your life.

Rachel Long — Wow. I don’t I don’t know that I could fully honor all that he taught me there. Every single day I have some leadership piece that I’m like, yes, I learned that at Emmanuel. I learned that from pastor Danny. But I will say something that I would want all senior pastors to hear that he did was, if I can, is that the beauty of how this transition went is like, I got to serve at Christmas at my church. And people were coming up to me asking me how my, the number one thing is how’s your project going? I love that. But how’s it going? How’s it… like people genuinely wanting to know how Joshua Center is.

Rachel Long — My son got to keep his youth group. My other two are adults and they live on their own. But my son, who’s still a junior in high school, gets to gets to still go to youth group and not feel awkward. So basically we got to keep our church because of this. So deciding early on that like, when when I left, there were two ah new multisites in the and the pot. They could choose which one was going to come next, or, you know, or based on how attendance and and things like that go, and availability of other churches to adopt.

Rachel Long — And so leaving feeling like okay, I’ve left our left my church in a good spot because it wasn’t just my pastor, it’s my church…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Rachel Long — …and I served there for ten years before I left. So really keeping focus like I want to honor Danny, but I want to honor Jesus.

Rich Birch — Right.

Rachel Long — I mean when I meet with him every morning if if at any point during this conversation I would have felt like I No, you did what, this was Abraham and Isaac moment. You did what I asked you to do. You don’t have to give up your job at Emmanuel, which by the way, I loved and still love my church. Then I I would have gone back and said…

Rich Birch — Right.

Rachel Long — You know, I think I was wrong. Oops. You know…

Rich Birch — Sure, sure.

Rachel Long — And I know there would have been grace and space to talk it through. But I think continuing to seek God’s will in it and and take the steps allows me not also to be a saboteur for for Emmanuel which I would love to see them reach, us – I’m still part of that’s still my church.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes, yes.

Rachel Long — Like so I would love to see us reach our 12 campuses. That’s that’s still in my heart. And I think that’s something, I’ll stop in just a sec. I think that’s something the senior pastor needs to know is you’re still on vision, even if you’re in a different capacity.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Rachel Long — I live to see people come to Christ and grow in Christ.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Rachel Long — I’ve gotten to lead two kids to Christ in the counseling room with their parents there. Like there don’t negate that like that person might still be on vision, even though they don’t get the privilege of being on staff anymore.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Danny Anderson — Absolutely.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I can I can say that I’m I’m also attending a church that I was on staff at. And I’m like a volunteer. I was about to say just a volunteer, but I’m you know, I I actually it’s a privilege and honor to and I’ve you know, it’s fun to like stand back and be like I am a cheerleader and excited for that and excited for, you know, our leadership as we continue to move forward.

Rich Birch — Danny, what about you? What happened to the Rachel-sized hole in the organization? You know, like, you know, when a senior leader like this leaves, that that does create, you know, you’re being kind, but that can create a bit of chaos in the organization. Because it’s like, okay, well, every my experience has been, and I’m sure this is the case with Rachel, the little bit I know her. She’s incredibly competent and you know there in some ways the organization ends up getting built around these people. That you know that we kind of end up we massage the org chart and it’s like there really is one person that could do this job. Their name’s Rachel Long and that’s normal. I don’t think that’s bad. That’s a normal part of this process.

Rich Birch — So what did what did you do? How did the organization shift? What happened? Because I think it’s actually an interesting opportunity to think about it more from the positive side. Hey, we can make some changes here. We can look at this in a slightly different way. What happened in that you know, after Rachel stepped out?

Danny Anderson — Yeah, so we’re in that right now. Still, it hasn’t been that long. So I think one of the indicators of how good a leader is, is what happens when they leave.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Danny Anderson — And you know, Rachel had three people that were reported to her directly: Allison, Aaron, and Cody. And those three people carry a ah heavy heavy lift across our entire church. And she led our church basically through them and others, but those were the three the three big players. And so those those team team members report directly to me for now. And it’s actually been it hasn’t been easy but it’s been it’s been delightful to learn like, okay these guys, like Allison’s incredible. Aaron Beasley’s a hustler, and you know Pastor Cody will do he’ll he’ll run through a wall for you. And so Rachel has she did there is a gap but there’s people there that are able to do the work. So so right now, I I have stepped into her role. It’s temporary until we until I can find another executive leader, but it hasn’t been chaos. It’s like, holy cow, what’s going on?

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Danny Anderson — It hasn’t been that way. And so, Rachel, I don’t know if I haven’t had a chance to tell you this, but they those guys are killing it. And and I…

Rachel Long — I love it.

Danny Anderson — …and I attribute that to you training them, empowering them, building them…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Danny Anderson — …giving them confidence. And so, ah yeah, it’s it’s it’s pretty cool right now what’s going on.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. The the way I hear that, it Rachel, is that he replaced you with three people. That’s the way I hear it. But you know. The work that used to be done by Rachel is now done by three people. That’s what I hear.

Rich Birch — Rachel, kind of pivoting in a slightly different direction. It’s related, but it’s kind of in the neighborhood of this conversation. Let’s say I’m on staff at a church. I’m, you know, just give me a picture, a church of 1,500 people, maybe not quite as large as as you guys, but and I’m thinking, I’m thinking maybe I should reach out to my lead pastor. Maybe I’m an executive pastor. And I’m like, I’m I’m, I’m thinking the Lord might be leading me to this.

Rich Birch — I had someone recently say this to me and they were like, what should I do? Um, should I go and, and there’s probably more than two options, but should I go and start having, should I talk to Vanderbloemen first, or should I go and talk to my lead pastor? You know, what help us through that, navigate that conversation.

Rachel Long — Sure. Well, the first thing I think that you have to remember in this, as an employee, is it’s your responsibility to be authentic and to be following God’s leadership in your life first.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Rachel Long — It’s not your pastor’s responsibility to make sure you’re following what God has led you to do. And you’re not responsible for your pastor’s reaction to what you’re going to say.

Rachel Long — I think if you come in there, like Joshua Center was never an exit strategy.

Rich Birch — Right.

Rachel Long — So if you come into a situation and you’re like, Hey, I’ve got this exit strategy. I’m ready to, I felt this way. I’ve talked to these head hunters. I’m ready to go. I mean, that is one way to do it, but you have to understand you’re choosing a corporate path. You’re not choosing a church path. And so, although we have a business to run inside a church to be good stewards, we are not a corporation in that manner.

Rich Birch — Good. Yep.

Rachel Long — So there has to be space to prayfully consider it, seek wise counsel, like you would for anything as an executive pastor. And then you have to have the courage, the courage is in the telling.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Rachel Long — And then knowing that you’re telling this to a human, that you could be hurting them…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Rachel Long — …and God’s plan could be hurtful to them. So leave space for that.

Rich Birch — Right.

Rachel Long — You would leave space if you were counseling a couple and you had to tell them something hard.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Rachel Long — You would leave space if you were telling something hard to an employee you manage. So, I mean, pastors are people. Your lead pastor’s a person. But you have to act in your own integrity in it.

Rich Birch — Right.

Rachel Long — And and I wouldn’t say that I did that perfectly. I would say that there were pieces of the coaching that were super helpful to bring clarity. So if your pastor is for you and they’re seeking God’s will for like their staff, then then you’re going to get some more clarity in this.

Rachel Long — Because we always think like, oh, it could go so terribly wrong. But what if it goes…

Rich Birch — What if it’s a go terribly great?

Rachel Long — …like hard, but good. Yeah.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Rachel Long — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah.

Rachel Long — It doesn’t have to be easy. This has not been easy. I miss my staff every day.

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

Rachel Long — Every day.

Danny Anderson — We miss you too.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s good coaching. Because I think there are people who sit on this conversation and and are thinking like, hmm, you know, like, I don’t know, like I’m I’m feeling, I’m sensing the Lord might be moving me on, but I just don’t know what to do with that feeling. I don’t know what to do with that sense. And…

Rachel Long — Sure.

Rich Birch — and yeah, I think having the bravery to say like, Hey, I want to talk about this. But then also giving space. I think that’s a good word there, Rachel, like giving space to be like, Hey, this may not go well. This may be, and that’s okay…

Rachel Long — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …but just because it won’t go well, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it.

Rachel Long — Yeah

Rich Birch — Danny, what about you? So you yeah maybe there’s a, maybe you’re a lead pastor and you sense that there might be somebody on your team that is thinking about this. And maybe it’s just through, like, this is a unique situation because, you know, Rachel had, which I understand, folks that are listening in. Rachel had been working on this. It’s obviously an incredible passion project. And so in some ways you could kind of see that, but what would you say to a lead pastor who sees something like this bubbling in their team with a senior leader, somebody, you know, like an executive pastor type person?

Danny Anderson — Yeah, I mean, I think that senior leaders, can they have an intuition about this stuff. You can see you could see some things ahead, otherwise you wouldn’t be the lead pastor.

Rich Birch — Right. Yes.

Danny Anderson — And so I think you when you when you sense that, I think it’s it’s appropriate to start the conversation…

Rich Birch — Right.

Danny Anderson — …to initiate the conversation and let the person know on the front, I am for you personally.

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Danny Anderson — I am I am I am more passionate about you as a person than the product you produce for the church. And and you have to mean that and in in the core of your being. And that’s hard because we’re pastors, as you’ve already mentioned, Rich. We’re so focused on the work product and the productivity and the loss of the productivity, if this person should leave. And who’s going to fill that gap? And that’s going to cause, you know oh my gosh, do we have enough money? Like what where we…

Danny Anderson — There’s all kinds of things that that happen. But you have to you have to get in a mental space, in a spiritual space, where it’s like, Lord, I care about this person. I truly want to shepherd them through this process. And I want to be for them. I want to help i want to help them.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Danny Anderson — God, if you have something else for this person, let me be part of helping them get to that space.

Rich Birch — Right.

Danny Anderson — I mean, and that’s our jobs as pastors. We’re we’re trying to take people from where they are to where God wants them to be…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Danny Anderson — …in every aspect of their life.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Danny Anderson — And so why would that be any different for Rachel or anybody else on my team? It’s like, hey, let me be part of the solution with you. I love you. And, and so that. And now if you’re not there, you got to get there. Because that’s the ball game.

Rich Birch — Right, right, right.

Danny Anderson — If you, if if that’s not true about you, you’ve got to kind of mature into that space. And, you know, I don’t know what to say to a person who’s not in that space, you know, other than you got to get there.

Rich Birch — Right, right. Yeah, that’s good. Well, and it feels like um this, if you’re a lead pastor listening in today, or you’re any, we’re using that as the framework, but it could be any, so any person that oversees people. And you suspect that you don’t have the kind of relationship where someone would come to you, that that’s the place to start. It’s like, oh, okay, we’ve got to have a lot of that. What’s it like to be on the other side of me conversations?

Danny Anderson — Oh yeah.

Rich Birch — How, how can I grow? And what, you know, how can I serve you better? And what, because if you sense that your people aren’t, are so afraid to talk to you about this, then it’s like, we’re on a whole bunch of fronts, we’re losing already, right? We’re already behind the eight ball and we’re not able to, you know, necessarily live out the vision that God’s called us to. That’s good.

Danny Anderson — Rich, I would I would also say, I know we’re coming down to the stretch here, but I would also say the pastors have to understand that that fear is there. It is there.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.

Danny Anderson — So it’s not like, is it you don’t have to wonder, it’s just there.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Danny Anderson — So you have to be the one to to to alleviate that.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Danny Anderson — And I would even go as far as to say that senior pastors should teach should do a staff development on this with their team.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Danny Anderson — Like devote a whole staff meeting. Like, hey, I’m gonna I’m gonna do 35 minutes of teaching on how do you leave well from our organization. And here’s my heart on the issue. And that, I mean, just coming from you in a staff meeting, that would be so, that’s setting the culture. That’s not gonna solve it necessarily, but it’s definitely gonna make it a little bit easier ah to that conversation.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, that’s so good. We wedid an interview a number of years ago with Jesse DeYoung from Flatirons. And they, Flatirons had a moment where um they actually asked their people if they would like to step off their team.

Danny Anderson — Wow.

Rich Birch — They provided, it was they kind of, it was during COVID and they they said like, hey, we would like, and I forget the number, but it was like 30 or 40% of their staff raised their hand and were like, yes. And that led them to this massive cultural change that they that they led through. And it was like, it was a a concrete moment when they realized, oh my goodness, there’s a large portion of our people would prefer not to work here than to work here. And but now on the back end of that, and they would say, man, God has used that transition.

Rich Birch — And I’m not saying you should do that, but but that idea of us going first and leading and raising the hand and saying, hey, we want to make this the best place for you, the healthiest place for you to to work at, which in this case, in the context of this conversation means you should be able to raise this conversation and not be in fear of it. That’s so good.

Rich Birch — Well, as we come down to land, um why don’t we do kind of last words, Rachel, what would be your last piece of advice? Maybe for somebody from your seat that’s sitting in an organization thinking the Lord might, you know, have something for them. What would you say to them? And then Danny, same thing. But then the reverse of that from your seat.

Rachel Long — Well, this is going to be a churchy answer. You need to pray through this. You need to fast over it.

Rich Birch — That’s good. Yep.

Rachel Long — You need to seek wise counsel…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Rachel Long — …and you need to do what you know you’ve been instructed to do in your own life. Because again, you don’t know if this is Abraham and Isaac moment, or you don’t know if this is Esther – at such a time as this. You don’t know. So and then I would say engage your leadership as soon as you can. I would have probably, if I had it to do over, have engaged even sooner with my leadership because…

Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.

Rachel Long — Engage them as soon as you can.

Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s a good little piece of advice there. Like, Hey, that’s a good nugget here at the end of that. Like if anything, default towards early is, you know, the way I would say that. Let’s get the conversation out there rather than, you know, don’t get so far down the road that it’s like, you’ve already decided you get one foot out the door. Let’s have the conversation early. That’s good. I like that.

Rich Birch — Danny, what about you from, from your seat as a, as a lead pastor?

Danny Anderson —Yeah, I mean, just a closing thought. I again, I guess I’ve already said this, but you know put put your people in God’s hands. They belong to him. They’re not yours. They’re, God has loaned them to you for a period. Everybody’s an interim pastor. My friend, Shawn Lovejoy says that. And so hold them loosely, love them well. And when it’s time for them to move on, be their biggest advocate. You know, just go go to bat for them and honor them. You just can’t go wrong with that.

Danny Anderson — And then I’ll the last thing I’ll say, Rich, is that for for senior leaders listening, ministry leaders, executive pastors listening, I guarantee you, guarantee you right now on your team, there’s two or three people that need to have this conversation, right now.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Danny Anderson — And not and they’re not having it because they don’t have permission.

Rich Birch — Right.

Danny Anderson — And so I would I would act immediately…

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Danny Anderson — …and because it’s it’s real. And so anyway, just put that little thought in people’s minds there. They need to take action quickly.

Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s a good nugget again, a great nugget at the end here. Hey, like the next all staff meeting, we should be talking about this. I should, I should reference this. You know, we need to create this kind of culture. That’s, that’s fantastic. Well, this is great.

Rich Birch — Rachel, where do we want people? We’ve got past episodes we’ll link to that you’ve been on. But where, if people want to get in touch with you, kind of track with what you’re up to these days, where’s that? And then the same with you, Danny. Where do we want to, what do we want to let let people know about on on each of your sides? Start with you, Rachel.

Rachel Long — You can go to joshuacenter.org, very simple, joshuacenter.org. And if you want to email me rachel at joshuacenter.org, you’ll find everything we’re doing there and what the organization is about, upcoming events, information, everything’s there.

Rich Birch — Love it. What about you, Danny?

Danny Anderson — Yeah, you guys can check check things out on Instagram @dannyanderson23. I also have a podcast, Church Growth Unleashed. Rich, you’ve been ah an honored guest on that podcast. And also just wanted to let people know that we’re doing a leadership conference, Church Growth Leadership Conference in September. And Rich, you’re gonna be there.

Rich Birch — Love it. Looking forward to it.

Danny Anderson — It’s very, very exciting. You’ll be one of our breakout speakers. So if people are interested in that, they can find that at Church Growth Unleashed. I think there’s a new website that just came out for that. So yeah, it’s pretty exciting.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. That’s churchgrowthunleashed.org. You should check that out. It really will be a great, it’s gonna be a great conference. The lineup’s amazing. Except for me, somehow I squeaked in. So I’m excited to be there. That’ll be fun and to be there for sure.

Rich Birch — So thanks so much, friends. I appreciate you being here. Thanks for what you’re doing and just want to honor you for the good things that have happened in this transition. Take care, friends.

Danny Anderson — Thank you, Rich.

Rachel Long — Thank you.

Thanks for joining us at the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Eric Smith, founder and lead pastor of Hope City Church in Florida and co-creator of SermonDone.

Are you a pastor who’s feeling the pressure of sermon prep each week? Wondering how you can save time on research and content creation without compromising the quality of your messages? Tune in as Eric shares how his experience as a church planter and pastor led him to create a tool that helps pastors streamline the sermon preparation process, saving valuable time while ensuring biblical accuracy.

Access SermonDone at www.sermondone.com and use it for free for five days, or use the code Rich20 to get 20% off the price. Learn more about Hope City Church at www.hopecityflorida.com.

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

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Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Risepointe

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Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Super excited for today’s conversation. We have got a repeat guest and you know what that means. We don’t, we rarely have repeat guests. We’re 800 some odd episodes in and it’s only been a handful of people that we’ve had on more than one time. And so you know what that means. You’ve got to lean in today because we’ve got somebody that we want you to hear from.

Rich Birch — We have got Eric Smith with us. He’s a part of an organization called SermonDone that I want to ah introduce you to today, if you’re unaware of them, but he’s also a practitioner. He is leading a church in Florida. He’s the founder and lead pastor of a church called Hope City Church, HopeCityFlorida.com. And he was ah previously a part of a church called Vaughn Forest City. Sorry, Vaughn Forest Church. Excited to have you on the show today, Eric. Welcome.

Eric Smith — Thanks so much for having me back. It’s an honor to be with you and excited for our conversation today.

Rich Birch — Yeah, this is going to be a good conversation. Why don’t you kind of fill in the picture? Tell us a little bit of the Eric Smith story. Tell us little bit about what you’re up to now. What what’s been on what’s been going on in your world since we last connected a few years ago?

Eric Smith — Yeah. So, uh, since we last connected, ah my family and I moved to Southwest Florida, planted a church down here called Hope City. And we launched three and a half years ago. It’s been a wild ride. It’s been amazing.

Eric Smith — And yeah, God’s just been doing incredible stuff, seen a lot of incredible growth numerically, spiritually. It’s been a lot of fun. I’m also in the business world with my wife, in the medical business ah that we have. And then ah about a year ago, started learning more and more about AI and just kind of had this conviction of how can we as the church leverage this tool to serve churches and to serve pastors. And so that’s what led me down this journey of SermonDone.

Rich Birch — Love it. Why tell us a little bit about Hope City? Kind of unpack that story a little bit. It’s been pretty amazing what God’s been up to. You’re a humble guy. So I know you you know you don’t want to brag about it. It’s obviously a whole team of people. God’s at at work there. But tell us a little bit of what’s gone on the last three years, three and a half years.

Eric Smith — Yeah, so we moved here December 19th of 2020. We knew a handful of people…

Rich Birch — Great time to move. Great time to move.

Eric Smith — Great time to move right in the middle of COVID. Yeah, I know. I had a lot of friends that were like, are you stupid, man? What’s wrong with you? You’ve lost your mind. Why are you moving to plant a church?

Rich Birch — Yes.

Eric Smith — And I was like, I don’t know, man. I’m just you know I’ve already planted once in Jackson, Mississippi, the Metro Jackson in ’09. And God did incredible things there with a church called Vertical Church that’s still going and doing great things.

Eric Smith — But anyway, so we, yeah, we moved here and we started ah medical practice that we have. And we started building our launch team. We launched the church 10 months after we moved. We went from 15 people to about 160 on our launch team.

Rich Birch — Amazing.

Eric Smith — Launched the church with over 400 October of ’21. And yeah, it’s just kept growing. Right now we’re seeing over 1,500 people in attendance…

Rich Birch — That’s incredible.

Eric Smith — …each weekend and we’ve launched a second campus back in October of late October of 24. It’s doing really, really well. But we’ve got we’ve got an incredible team. I’m blessed to have guys who’ve worked with me in the past who are part of my team again here.

Rich Birch — So good.

Eric Smith — And so just a lot of comfort familiarity and understanding of what we’re doing. And so, yeah, it’s been a blast. God’s doing some incredible stuff. We’re in a big capital campaign. We’re building a future facility for our Bonita campus, which is the original location. And so it’s just full speed blazing ahead. So we’re having fun.

Rich Birch — Love it. Good. Well, excited to to watch that journey. It’s fun to watch for sure. So want to talk about SermonDone and AI. One of my convictions is there are two kinds of church leaders out there when it comes to AI. There’s those that are attempting to leverage it and figure out how can we use this tool to advance the gospel, to ah you know to lift those things that we do that you know maybe we can get a computer to help us with that. And then there’s those that are being left behind.

Rich Birch — And I want to convince friends that you’re listening in. I want you to take steps towards um learning more about SermonDone, leaning in. But let’s talk about kind of the genesis of this. Where did SermonDone come from? Why you know why why are you investing time, effort, and energy into this? What’s the problem that you’re attempting to solve with SermonDone?

Eric Smith — Yeah. So just a tiny little bit of a backstory. Pretty much my whole ministry career, and I’ve been doing this over 20 years, uh, has, I’ve just had a burning desire to help other churches and pastors. So I’ve, I started a church planting network in Mississippi called 242 that’s still going, helping plant churches. I’m part of Strategic Launch Network here, ah in the US now, and I get to volunteer and help with them. I’ve consulted, done all different types of stuff.

Eric Smith — And so um it was about a year ago as the conversation of AI was continuing to grow and accelerate. I was like, man, I love this tool. And I’ve always been kind of a forward thinking, open to using tools to be better in technology. And so it’s never been something I’ve been scared of. And so I was like, how do we utilize this to really serve pastors? And we all know that the top thing that pastors wrestle with is is delivering the sermon each week.

Eric Smith — 83%, according to studies, 83% of people come to the church based on the sermon. It’s it’s a big deal. And so how can we serve these churches? And so I began to research what’s out there what’s going on?

Rich Birch — Right.

Eric Smith — And I’m not being critical of anything else at that time that was out there. I just couldn’t find anything that I felt like this really works for pastors which led me on a journey to connect with John Michael, who’s my business partner in this whole project. And we came together. He’s kind of the marketing/tech side. I’m the pastoral, and he’s been a pastor as well.

Eric Smith — But after writing hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of sermons, I was like, how do we create something that really comes alongside of a pastor and is the sermon assistant that they’ve always wished they had…

Rich Birch — Love it.

Eric Smith — …that could accelerate and generate content that’s biblically sound, that lines up with their theology, ah that lines up with their unique voice? How do we create something that’s like that? And so that began the journey of developing SermonDone. Our team of developers started working together, and that’s how we developed where we are today.

Rich Birch — Love it. You know, one of the things, so I, you know, most of my career has been in the executive pastor seat, that kind of secondary seat, supporting some incredible communicators. And, you you know, one of the things I’ve seen over time, and you mentioned it, you know, 83% of the reason why people attend a church is because of the teaching.

Rich Birch — And, um I remember, I don’t know, 15 years ago when that really, that light bulb went off inside of me. I’ve been working in church for a long time. I realized, man, we’ve got to organize as an executive pastor, I’ve got to help organize the life of the the rest of the stuff in a senior pastor’s world, a lead pastor’s world, to make it so that they can produce great messages, so that they can do a great job at that piece. It’s critically important.

Rich Birch — And I when I heard about SermonDone, I was excited to learn more about it because I do think that, man, this is a tool. Love that idea of a sermon assistant you’ve always wanted. Tell us more about that. What how are you kind of living out that that dream with this tool?

Eric Smith — Yeah, so we, one of my primary visions and passions in developing this was how do we create something that’s going to be really easy to use, because most pastors are new to new to AI, so that they can easily use that’s very easy to understand and learn, that also would line up with their voice and their unique writing style and come alongside them and give content to accelerate the research side of things. And so when we developed this, we wanted to make sure that there was almost like these guardrails or a fence, a protection ah that the pastor would have ah a confidence and a trust in what it was delivering and the content it was giving them.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Eric Smith — And so we really worked hard on that. And yeah, so it’s it’s got several different elements within the platform. You know, you can sign up for free and use it for five days and use it as much as you want for those five days and play with it. And you’re going to see…

Rich Birch — This weekend’s sermon. You could do this weekend’s sermon. That’s great.

Eric Smith — Yeah, well, and you know, it it has a lot that it offers.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Eric Smith — But I always tell pastors, use each element that it has or each section that it has based on your convictions, right? Everybody’s got different convictions about technology. And what we’re seeing, though, even since we launched SermonDone, is a lot more pastors are now warming up. Because what happened when AI first came out, everybody was like, oh, no, I don’t want the robot to write my sermon. I don’t want the robot to help me. I don’t It’s all going to be, how’s it going to be accurate and sound and all these type things?

Eric Smith — I think some of those fears are starting to come down. And really creating SermonDone was to help pastors have something they could use and have confidence in it rather than just any type of chat that would be available online. This one actually has theological guardrails.

Eric Smith — You build your own personal pastor profile, with your teaching style. You have the ability to upload up to 15 of your own sermons that you’ve written so that it knows your voice. And so when it’s giving you stuff, it’s understanding who you are, your theological heritage, your preaching style, the Bible translation that you prefer to use when you preach. All those type things to really come alongside you and help you and building out, outlines, planning sermon series, doing research.

Eric Smith — I’ll tell you one of the things that’s been so cool to me because sometimes you hear AI and people are like, oh, it’s going to make us all dumb. It’s just going to do all the work for us. Actually, it’s the reverse. I don’t know if you’re experiencing this, Rich, in many ways, but with me, with SermonDone, and I use it constantly, obviously, was the research side of things, it’s connecting dots in scripture that I never saw.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Yeah.

Eric Smith — And I’m not trying to brag, but I’ve got an undergrad degree in biblical studies, two masters, and I have a doctorate.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Eric Smith — Now my doctorate is a DMin. I’m not a PhD. I’m a practitioner.

Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah.

Eric Smith — But I mean, it’s just connecting dots. And I’m like, oh my goodness, I never saw this. This is amazing. And it’s just bringing things together for me. And I’m learning more than I’ve ever learned before.

Rich Birch — Love it. I want to underline one of the things you said there. One of the things I’ve noticed as I’ve done research and worked with very large, fast-growing churches is we often, we get this perception that the teaching, it’s like some lone person, they go into a room and pull all that together and do it themselves and then get up there.

Rich Birch — Now, that’s actually just not true. Teaching is a team sport in in lots of churches across the country where it’s a group of people behind the scenes. I’m literally talking about researchers, writers, comedians, people who are helping these communicators do what they do. And the part of what I love what you’ve done here is you’ve said, Hey, we want to give that to everybody.

Eric Smith — Yes.

Rich Birch — Like, how do we hand that off to, because if I’m a church of, you know, 200, 500, 2000, I can’t afford to have a bunch of people working on my message, but I can’t afford SermonDone.

Rich Birch — Let’s talk about the pastor profile. Cause this is one of the things when you told me about it, ah that really got me intrigued. You kind of blew up through a bunch there. Talk about the sermon style, the theological kind of tradition background settings. How does all that work?

Eric Smith — Yeah. So just to be you know clear, SermonDone in general has a fence around it.

Rich Birch — Yes. Okay, good.

Eric Smith — And then and then what what brings it in even tighter for you that personalizes it is your profile. And so everything from uploading the 15 sermons, I think that’s maybe the most important element. I have 15 of my sermons and pick your favorite 15 that you’ve written. Oh, this is how I like things. Put those in there. Pick your theological heritage, because there are some nuances that in the sermon builder that it will pick up on on that. And then also what translation you use, right?

Eric Smith — I don’t want it to be giving me ideas and then I’ve got to go in and change…

Rich Birch — Right.

Eric Smith — …the, you it’s like only giving me NIV and I use New American or whatever translation you use. And so that’s, that’s a big part of it. And then your preaching style, right?

Eric Smith — So it’s going to help It’s really, it’s we never created this to like write sermons for you.

Rich Birch — Right.

Eric Smith — It was created to be a partner and to assist you. And I loved what you said. Some of the greats that we’ve all looked up to, whether there be Charles Spurgeon, ah John Wesley, all these guys had assistants.

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Eric Smith — Like they had people that served them. And so this is now available to all of us. And so the technology, it’s a beautiful thing.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Eric Smith — But yeah, so it takes all that information, along with already the fence we’ve built, and it curates that content uniquely to you. So it’s just an idea machine. It’s it’s giving you incredible ideas. I’ve had pastors that are using it and we’ve been trusted by hundreds of pastors now, which is pretty cool to see, even though we’re very early. And yeah, it’s it’s it’s amazing what some of the pastors have told me. Some of them that are like, man, I just, I get stuck on not knowing what to call the points that I have that go back to my main idea. And and they can put that in there and it’s it’s speaking in their language and their voice and it’s giving them those ideas.

Eric Smith — And I know that, yeah, there’s an investment financially. It’s $99 a month. You can get it cheaper if you do a year, but you’re thinking 20 bucks a week. How much is your sermon worth?

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Eric Smith — If it’s the key factor that grows your church…

Rich Birch — Right.

Eric Smith — …we I spend more than that every week on coffee creamer in our church.

Rich Birch — Right. Yes, yes.

Eric Smith — And I mean, I listen, I love the coffee. We have really good coffee at our church, like really good coffee.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Right, right.

Eric Smith — But the sermon is a little more important.

Rich Birch — 100%.

Eric Smith — And I can make that investment, even if it just gives me a little bit extra, even if it just helps me a little bit more with my my research. The research is amazing in there as well.

Rich Birch — Yeah, the way I think about it when I’ve been in there and messed around with it, I think about it like, you know, it’s a well-educated seminary student who’s doing my initial work. It’s like, hey, I’m going to do a message on this. And can you gather up a bunch of ideas for me? Which which I don’t know that that’s got to save hours, an hour, two hours. It’s the initial kind of, I find the highest value of it is the initial kind of heavy lift part of this, which isn’t, isn’t actually sermon writing. That’s like the, that’s the initial part. It’s like the gathering together, but then I got to get before the Lord wrestle with him.

Eric Smith — Sure.

Rich Birch — Hey, what is it that you want to, what is it that I should be saying? How do I um you know, how do I, whats what’s the kind of unique thing that I want to say? What is he wanting me to say to my people this weekend? But like, all let’s pull together all those initial ideas. Let’s get AI to do that initial work so that I can actually have more time and more energy to focus on the part that actually has got more, I would say, it’s more important to the overall kind of delivery ah you know of the message itself.

Rich Birch — I love, I don’t want to go over. You talked about this, but I want to underline it for us. I love this idea of uploading your sermons. I, I think that’s super unique because it’s not just generic ideas. It’s like, here are some messages that when I think about what are kind of my core messages, I upload those and then your engine will will kind of take that into consideration as it’s producing.

Rich Birch — Can you give me a sense of how that’s modifying? Not the backend, the technology side of it, but what’s it doing to kind of modify or you know influence messages going forward? What’s that look like?

Eric Smith — Yeah, so if it’s giving you ideas of, like, say say you’ve got your sermon, and you’re looking for, like, a big idea.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Eric Smith — Or you know some people call it a big truth or or big idea…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Eric Smith — …whatever your your main statement, ah just as this one simple example, right? It’s going to give you ideas that are in your, the way you would talk…

Rich Birch — Right.

Eric Smith — …not just generically…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Eric Smith — …where it’s like, that doesn’t sound anything like me.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Eric Smith — Because it’s got 15 of your sermons where it’s already studied you and understands uniquely how you communicate your unique voice, um your style, how you write. And so, yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s super helpful in that way, how it can help develop that content for you that’s unique and that fits your unique voice.

Rich Birch — Love it. There’s a ton we could talk about here. I want to jump to the planning the planning area. To me, as somebody who’s you know involved in worship planning, but not necessarily speaking, you know, I’m in the room when we’re talking about, hey, we need a six-week series on, we’re thinking about three weeks on that. I’m in that conversation pretty consistently. Talk to us about the planning tab. What how does that work? what give Give us some examples of what that looks like.

Eric Smith — Yeah, so you just go into that tab and you put in, I want to a five-week sermon series on fear or whatever your topic is, and it’s going to give that to you. Or you could say, want to do a 20-week series through the book of Acts, and it’s going to give that to you. And if you don’t like what it gives you, just ask it to give you another option.

Rich Birch — Give some other options. Yep.

Eric Smith — And it’s just going to keep giving it to you until you get what you want.

Eric Smith — But yeah, that’s that’s a really powerful tool. I’ll give you ah a real practical story.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Eric Smith — Last last year, during the summer, I try to back off my preaching schedule a little bit like most leads pastors do. And so me and our campus pastor for our Alico campus, we were working and we spent like a day and a half, two days going through the Psalms. And we were like, we don’t want any Psalm to have the same theme. And and and and every different pastors are going to preach different things. And so literally we spent like two days just working on that.

Eric Smith — And it was like, it was meaningless. I mean, I hate to say it that way, but it was, it was work it really didn’t, I mean, it just was organizational work.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Eric Smith — After I created SermonDone, it hit me one day and I put the same thing in and I was like, I did that in two minutes and it took me two days.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah. Oh gosh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Eric Smith — So that’s, that’s, that’s the kind of stuff where it’s like, man, that just saved me an insane amount of time.

Eric Smith — And just just to be clear, the vision behind why I wanted to create this was I wanted to help pastors save time on the research and create an idea machine that would accelerate the writing process. Because I’m convinced that most pastors spend the vast majority of their time writing their sermon. They run out of time to work on the prep of delivering the sermon. And the result is sermons that are not that engaging.

Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.

Eric Smith — What if we could create a different reality? What if we could cut the sermon prep in half and then they could take that time and really focus on the delivery? There’s a there’s a option there’s a section in our website on SermonDone where I’ve created a masterclass on delivering sermon content. It’s completely free. It’s just part of the platform. And so that was the reason I created that masterclass.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Eric Smith — I created that masterclass because the heart behind this is not to just write people’s sermons. I don’t want a robot writing my sermon. I want as much assistance as I can get to write better sermons faster so that I can allow that sermon to take root in my soul.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Eric Smith — Because what makes a great sermon is not what’s on the paper. It’s what’s in the pastor’s heart.

Rich Birch — Oh, amen. Amen.

Eric Smith — And when it gets into your soul, you’ve heard the analogy. We don’t want to microwave our sermons. We want them in a smoker or a crock pot.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, it’s true. Yep.

Eric Smith — You know, we we those sermons that get in the crockpot, that get in the smoker, man, when those are delivered, they’re fire. I’m convinced that most pastors are not engaging in their preaching, not because of what’s written on the paper.

Eric Smith — If you took… Pastor A and Pastor B, and one of the sermons was super engaging and amazing, and Pastor, the other one was not. You could look at their notes and go, wow, those are pretty much the same. Like they had the same points for the most part, scripture, all that. What is it that sets them apart? It’s the pastor who’s willing to spend the time in prayer and preparation…

Rich Birch — Amen, amen.

Eric Smith — …not just what’s written, but for what’s written to get into their soul, to get into their heart. And so if we can accelerate that, that’s the vision behind SermonDone, right? Let’s accelerate that.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Eric Smith — And help a guy curate that information, help the the person curate that information faster so that they can really spend the time that they’re not getting now in the actual study of the sermon, getting it into their hearts so that when they deliver it, it is dynamic, it’s authentic as it should be. And it’s, it’s truly connecting with the hearer.

Rich Birch — Amen. That’s so good. I love that. One of my, um I worked for Tim Lucas at Liquid Church, fantastic leader. I, you know, I put him up against, he’s like top five in the country in my mind. This guy’s a monster communicator. He is so good. And had the privilege of years of, you know, journeying pretty close with him on the sermon side of things. And I know still to this day, um I really am convinced a part of why he is such a good communicator is exactly what you’re talking about. They he does um out loud practicing of the message. Still, he’s you know almost 30 years in on this, you know church of 5,000 people, master communicator and he still stands in front of virtually empty room and is like I’m going to redo this and then gets feedback on that.

Rich Birch — Man, if we could get people to to let’s get the boring, and again this this is my words not Eric’s words, don’t don’t send him emails, don’t send hate emails to him, send them me. If we can get the boring heavy lift part of it, the research part of it, the early steps…

Eric Smith — Yeah.

Rich Birch — If we can pull that off and give pastors more time on the the part that I agree is the part that actually connects with our people, man, we’re going to drive up engagement in in in churches all across the country, which is just incredible. I think that’s that’s amazing.

Eric Smith — Well, and and I don’t want to sound like a heretic, but somebody may say that I am. I don’t know. But I’ve studied the Bible and I haven’t found a scripture yet that actually tells me to write a sermon.

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.

Eric Smith — I’ve actually found a lot that say to preach the word.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Eric Smith — And so now I’m not saying don’t write your sermon. I write sermons.

Rich Birch — Yep. Yes.

Eric Smith — I’ve written hundreds of them. I’m just saying, if you really want to get technical about it, our calling is to preach God’s word…

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.

Eric Smith — …to preach the Bible in an engaging and dynamic way that in the art, the art. And I have what you just said about preaching out loud. I have all that in the in the free masterclass.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Eric Smith — And I talk about the art of preaching. The art of preaching is really, man delivering the message contextually where you are to connect with the people that you’re talking to in a way that makes sense.

Rich Birch — It’s so good.

Eric Smith — And a lot of guys, I’m not being mean, but they’re just not making sense.

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Eric Smith — And I really believe it’s because they’re spending all this time writing and they’re getting bogged down in the writing and they’ve written it and they think, oh, I know it. And then they step on stage and they really don’t know it.

Eric Smith — And what Tim has done, I’ve done as well. I mean, I’ve preached my, I used to preach my sermon to my dog when I didn’t have anybody but me. And we started the church in Mississippi.

Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.

Eric Smith — My dog heard every sermon.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Eric Smith — That dog was, that that that dog was a strong Christian, man.

Rich Birch — Sanctified, that’s a sanctified dog

Eric Smith — That’s a sanctified dog. He got saved and born again so many times, man. It was wild.

Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely.

Rich Birch — Absolutely. Love it. Yeah. Well, Mark, Mark Clark, we had Mark Clark from ah Bayside on early in this year.

Eric Smith — Yeah.

Rich Birch — And I I dove in with him around teaching and same thing. I was like, hey well, let’s let’s pull the lid off. Tell me about your actual process. And he talked about the same thing. He’s like, listen, Saturday morning, I’m out in a shed in my backyard and I’m, and I am preaching. And again, giant church, hugely influential communicator working on the delivery part of it. Man, if we could get more churches working on that.

Rich Birch — Now, I I would be remiss if I don’t ask. I know there’s people that are listening in and they’re thinking, like, wait a second. Why don’t I just use ChatGPT for this? Why don’t I why don’t I just use Llama or you know some other AI model that’s out there? Um, why why invest with you guys? Why spend the money to do that? Uh, playing a bit of a devil’s advocate, help us understand that.

Eric Smith — Sure. Yeah, no, that’s that’s a great question. I use Chat for a lot of things um that are, you know, outside of my my Bible, biblical research, sermon research stuff. But one of the things that’s unique about Sermon Done is it’s built with those biblical guardrails. And so it’s going to deliver content to you that you can be confident in.

Eric Smith — Where Chat, you know, it’s it’s it’s kind of more open, where this is going to prioritize the answers to be scripture driven. It’s designed to reflect that that biblically grounded response, the scripture rooted responses. It’s also understands that you’re a pastor because of your profile, it knows your voice, all those unique things.

Eric Smith — And so it’s delivering that content uniquely to you. And so I think those are the big things. And then the other thing too is we’ve spent, I don’t know, I can’t even tell you how many hours…

Rich Birch — Right.

Eric Smith — …building out these prompts on the backend that you can’t see as the user…

Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.

Eric Smith — …that are helping, you know, even on the research, when you go in there, all the different prompts that are prebuilt to help you. And so it’s a great, great tool, especially for those who are just getting into AI for sermon writing. And so those are some of the other, some of the things, obviously.

Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.

Eric Smith — You know, that’s that’s the big thing, right? Is the theological framework, your sermons, all those type things compared to using ah any other source.

Eric Smith — And you know every pastor that would watch this, and I know there’s a lot of XP, so make sure to share with your pastor on this one, if he whoever preaches at your at your place. But I would say that we all, most pastors have a budget for research and books.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Eric Smith — This is only $100 a month.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Eric Smith — And actually, I think people can use RICH20 and get 20% off.

Rich Birch — Yep. Yeah, that’s great.

Eric Smith — And so, yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s a small investment. Give it a shot. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to use it, at least download and use it for five days for free…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Eric Smith — …and go watch the sermon masterclass that’s on there for free. And then you can, you know, you can cancel your membership if you don’t like it. But at least do that because I’m telling you truly my heart and desires to just help pastors to be more successful, to build the kingdom, to reach more people.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Eric Smith — And I believe the greatest way we reach more people is by writing sermons that connect and preaching sermons that connect. At least that’s what the stats tell me.

Rich Birch — Yeah, so good. Listen, friends, I want a hearty endorsement. I really do want you to try sermondone.com. Drop by there. Like you say, try the five, five day trial, use that code rich done. You’ll, get you’ll save some there. The amount of money we’re talking about is small in comparison to the value of the importance of the teaching. Even if you try it for a couple months, I’ll push back on Eric a little bit and say, I would try it for a couple months.

Rich Birch — Like, you know, there are going to be, there are going to be a time, use it week in, week out, and you’re going to, you’re going to hit on a week where you’re like, man, things are extra busy this week. There’s a crazy thing going on. The fact that I was able to jumpstart into my process, still do all the stuff I need to do to make it deliver. Man, you’ll see you’ll see huge value you know throughout your time with it.

Rich Birch — So again, just drop by SermonDone. I would strongly encourage you to do this. There’s a bunch of stuff in here we haven’t talked about. There is kind of post-sermon resources, discipleship resources. You can upload upload your sermon and it’ll generate for you. Talk us through what does what is that part of it as well.

Eric Smith — Yeah. So it does small group curriculum, does small group questions. You can upload your sermon and it’ll extract and create a TXT file that you send to your production director for your sermon slides.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Eric Smith — It really has a lot.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Eric Smith — And we’ve got some other amazing features. I don’t know when this ah podcast is going to air…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Eric Smith — …but we’ve got one that being developed right now when you upload your sermon, it’s going to help curate develop a children’s curriculum that goes along with the sermon.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Eric Smith — Now, in your Sermon Builder, you can actually write youth sermons. You can pick your audience when you get into the Sermon Builder. But this is going to be a little different where you upload the completed sermon and it creates that content. So we’ve got pre-sermon research. We’ve got outline ideas. We’ve got sermon planning, series planning. We’ve got the discipleship side of things. There’s so many different features that are in there. It’s really… a one-stop shop for all sermon content development. And we’re continuing to improve and make it better every day.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s two things to to underline there that I want people to hear. This is just at the front end. You guys are working on new stuff that’s going to make this even better down the road. At some point, I’ve told them, I think 100 bucks is too cheap. I think they should charge more, but that’s just me.

Rich Birch — And you eventually they’re going to say, hey, we’ve added all this other stuff on. I would get in now. Now’s a good time to jump on board – SermonDone. And the other thing, i I had sent this tool to a number of teaching pastor friends of mine. I said, hey, can you mess around with this? And one guy came back and said, Dude, the resource, the discipleship resource tab alone is worth $100. Like ah coming up with those questions at once the thing is done is painful. So, you know, ah just doing that alone um is is worth the, you know, the price of admission.

Rich Birch — So ah friends, I would, ah you really should pick this up and, and you know, get this ball rolling again, sermondone.com. Just as we as we come to land, I’m sure we’ll have you on in the future, there’s going to be new stuff that’s going to come out. I want to make sure people try this. Anything else you want to say eric just as we wrap up today’s episode?

Eric Smith — Yeah, just thanks so much for taking the time to hear about what’s going on. And, you know, I’m just I’m thankful to have the time together and excited to see how the Lord’s going to use this to serve pastors, to help you get better to develop content faster. And I was joking about just cancel. I agree with Rich. Give it given a couple months.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Eric Smith — Give it a couple months. And once this becomes part of your process, and I just want to say one last thing. When we created SermonDone, a lot of the sermon writing assistant type things that are out there, they want you to change your process and fit into their box.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Eric Smith — One of the things I did not want, I’ve been preaching for over 20 years, and a lot of the listeners on here have been preaching for many years. They’ve got a system. And once a pastor finds a routine and a system, they like it.

Rich Birch — Oh, 100%. Yes.

Eric Smith — Right? This is a tool to improve and speed up your process, not change your process.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Eric Smith — I think that’s a… when I, when I built the way it works and I saw it in my mind, I wanted it to fit. And this is created by pastors for you as a pastor to preach and to create content.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Eric Smith — And even for XPs that preach, you know, just a few times a year, it would be well worth your investment.

Rich Birch — Absolutely. For sure.

Eric Smith — And you can get even a bigger discount with the annual membership. So.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Great. This has been so good. So we’ll send people to sermondone.com. If people want to track with you, ah Eric, or at the churches, where do we want to send them on online if they’re interested in kind of tracking along with you?

Eric Smith — Man, I have to confess, I’m pretty terrible when it comes to building a brand. I’m like…

Rich Birch — All good. All good.

Eric Smith — …just Hope City, hopecityflorida. Florida is spelled out dot com.

Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s great.

Eric Smith — And then, you know, my name is so generic. You can find me on Facebook, though. I think I need to open some other social media accounts, but I’m I’m not good at that. So maybe I’ll have my team focus on that.

Rich Birch — It’s all good. Yeah, that’s great.

Eric Smith — Thanks so much, though.

Rich Birch — This has been great. Thanks for being here today, friends. Again, heartily endorse SermonDone. I really would encourage you to to try to check it out. It really is a great way to get the the kickstart to your sermon process. Thanks so much for being here, Eric. Appreciate you being here today.

Eric Smith — Thanks.

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re joined today by Aaron Stanski, founder and CEO of Risepointe, a church design and project management firm that helps growing ministries align their physical spaces with their mission. With a background in engineering and church leadership, Aaron brings unique insights into how churches can strategically plan for future growth through facility design and proactive planning.

Are you leading a growing church and starting to feel the squeeze? Wondering what to prioritize when your parking lot’s full, your kids’ spaces are stretched, and your worship center is near capacity? Tune in as Aaron shares a practical framework for addressing facility constraints, avoiding project panic, and preparing now for sustainable growth in the future.

To learn more about Risepointe’s Needs Analysis, visit risepointe.com. Download the free resource, 10 Things to Get Right Before You Build, 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: Portable Church

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Click here to watch the free webinar “Launch a New Location in 150 Days or Less” and grab the bundle of resources for your church!

Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. I am really looking forward to today’s conversation. Got both an expert and a friend on the podcast, a return guest, which means we got high value here. We’ve got Aaron Stanski with us. He is the founder and CEO of Risepointe. They’ve got 15 plus years of church design, leadership, project management experience. They provide creative design solutions that really remove lids ah that prevent growth in ministries. They work with churches and schools and nonprofits on architecture, interior design, graphic design, branding, so much more. They are incredible leaders. And Aaron is the guy at the tip of the spear. Welcome to the show, Aaron. So glad. Welcome back.

Aaron Stanski — Yeah. Thanks, Rich. Good to be here.

Rich Birch — Always good to always good to see you. And yeah, maybe for folks that don’t know, give us the Aaron Stanski story.

Aaron Stanski — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Compress that down, and then we’ll jump into today’s I got a burning question for you today, Aaron.

Aaron Stanski — Sweet. Yeah. Well, I mean, I grew up in ministry, Rich. My dad was a pastor. We actually planted a church out in Boston when I was a kid. So I like to think I have some church planter blood in me there.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Aaron Stanski — Went to school for engineering, did that for a while with Harley Davidson motorcycles before ending up leaving that and ah joining staff with Cru and then with my church. So I was on staff at my church for a while.

Aaron Stanski — We went through a big building project. And since I had engineering experience, I sort of got tapped to help out there. So I had to hire, interview architects and engineers and AV consultants and all that stuff. And so I loved it. I actually got to take the engineering mind that God had created me with and sort of the ministry heart and bring those two things together.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Aaron Stanski — And now that’s what I get to do. I get to help churches and Christian schools all over the country figure out how to align their facilities with their mission and vision and go through big projects. So it’s super fun.

Rich Birch — Love it. I love I love to have Aaron on when we’re thinking about, you know, really anything to do with facility stuff. He is, if you were to email me and say, Hey, I’m thinking about facility stuff. Who should I talk to? I would say, talk to Aaron cause he’s a great, he’s super generous. Thing I love about him is he actually does love the local church. There are folks in this space who are like, they’re just trying to sell you something, or at least that’s the impression I get. I don’t know if that’s true. I can’t read a person’s heart, but I get that impression from other folks. That’s definitely not Aaron. He really loves churches. And I was thinking about this question recent, Aaron…

Aaron Stanski — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …and I thought, man, I want to get him on the show to talk about it. So, you know, I my mission is to help a hundred churches grow by a thousand people. I interact with growing churches…

Aaron Stanski — Sure.

Rich Birch — …all across the country and which is fantastic. And just recently I had a mutual friend say, you know, there’s this, this neg this negative narrative about the local church that it’s like, oh, all churches are in decline. They’re all not going anywhere. Things are terrible. But that’s just not true.

Aaron Stanski — No.

Rich Birch — There are hundreds, thousands of churches that are making a difference all across the size spectrum of all different sizes.

Aaron Stanski — Yeah.

Rich Birch — You know, 200, 2000, 20,000 that are growing. And I’d love to kind of talk about it from that perspective today.

Aaron Stanski — Sure.

Rich Birch — Hey, let’s assume that our churches are growing, and I come to you and I’m like, hey, we’re growing. What should I be thinking about? What are some kind of questions we should be wrestling with?

Aaron Stanski — Yeah. And I mean, I get that same thing too, Rich. I mean, I had ah an interview with a potential employee last week, and he was like, you guys just work with churches and Christian schools. He’s like, is there going to be work like next year? Are churches doing well?

Rich Birch — Yes. Aren’t they all closing? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Aaron Stanski — And I was like I was like, well, first off, we’re working with amazing churches that are like rolling up their sleeves, that are getting after it when it comes to evangelism and discipleship and serving their local community. And I was telling this guy, I was like, man, I don’t put a whole lot of stock in like political solutions for some of the problems that we’re facing.

Rich Birch — Right. It’s so true.

Aaron Stanski — But man, when I see the local church just rocking it and engaging their community…

Rich Birch — So true.

Aaron Stanski — …wrestling with tough questions, serving the poor, preaching the gospel. I mean, those churches, they’re growing.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Aaron Stanski — And we see those all over the country um in really difficult, ah you know, downtown urban environments, all the way out to rural ah people driving 45 minutes to an hour to experience what God’s doing. So it’s really exciting.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. It’s true. The local church done well is an unstoppable force for good.

Aaron Stanski — It is.

Rich Birch — I really do believe that. And, you know, it’s a privilege to serve some of those folks. But I know, like, let’s try to get in the head of a growing church.

Aaron Stanski — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Like, you know, maybe you’re ah maybe you’ve gone from two services to three services and you’re like, oh, gosh, I and how many services are we going to do? Are we going to end up with 25 services? Or like you stand out on a Sunday morning, you just happen to come in late and your parking lot is like completely full.

Aaron Stanski — Right.

Rich Birch — Or like your kids ministry people are sending you pictures mid-service of like, there are way too many kids in this room. What what would what are some of the questions? How would you help a church like that start to wrestle through this question?

Aaron Stanski — Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and those are great questions. Those are great problems to have. Right?

Rich Birch — So true.

Aaron Stanski — But one of the things ah that we’ve been working on a little bit is, is kind of what we call our, the constraints framework.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Aaron Stanski — And this certainly isn’t original thought with Risepointe. I mean, this is just a business principle that says, Hey, ah if you had to, if you, if you had to grow or double the size of your business, what would be the first things to break? What are the constraints that are preventing you from doing that?

Rich Birch — Right.

Aaron Stanski — And you take that first constraint and you throw all your resources, you attack that first constraint until it’s solved, and then you move on to the next one.

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.

Aaron Stanski — And I’d say so, you know, we’ve been walking a similar process through with churches and saying, OK, you know, if you had to double your attendance over the next year, like what would break first?

Rich Birch — Right. That’s good.

Aaron Stanski — Or if you had to bring online twice as many seats in the next year, like how would you go about doing that? And so to, you know, predictively look at, okay, what breaks first, certainly like their systems and their strategies, there’s people processes involved in there. But when we’re looking at buildings, right, when we’re looking at projects and facilities and sites, those problems tend to take years to solve.

Aaron Stanski — And so we have to look at those things and say, okay, when is the building, when is our parking, when do seats or kids space, when do one of those things become the lid? And then start to plan around that solution.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Aaron Stanski — And there’s lots of different solutions, right? I mean, multisite and add like you mentioned, adding services and stuff. But measuring the cost of those and figuring out what we are going to do in order to continue to grow.

Rich Birch — Are there… Well, first of all, I love that. What you know, what would happen if your church, if your attendance doubled in the next year, what would break? That is a compelling question. That’s, man, that’s a great even let’s pull our leaders together for an afternoon and ask that question together and say, hey, let’s let’s think about this really clearly.

Rich Birch — Because, man, what I would hate is that it’s actually constraints we’ve put in. Maybe we’re we’re actually preventing that growth because of the way our facility or whatever is built. Now, are there areas that you’re seeing on the facility side that are just common constraints that are like, you know, man, we just see people bumping up against this issue or that issue time and time again. Is there an area that you would kind of direct people to be thinking about?

Aaron Stanski — Well, the easiest ones to just sort of see and observe, ah you know, if you’re in church leadership…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Aaron Stanski — …you know, parking lot is pretty easy to see and observe.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Aaron Stanski — Like you’ll probably have some volunteers report back to you or even your first impressions guests say, hey, we saw some people drive through the parking lot, not find a spot and drive out.

Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.

Aaron Stanski — And that’s just heartbreaking, right, on the ministry side of things.

Aaron Stanski — Also seats in the auditorium. That’s a really easy one to measure and see just because we can observe it. I’d say we we tend to look out at a 60% full auditorium and think like, man, this is it’s pretty full. There may be some capacity there. So you do want to like actually count, ah but seats are a little, an easy one. Obviously kid space. If you’re If you’re like, hey, we had to start turning families away. The second grade classroom was you know at capacity for volunteers or something.

Rich Birch — Right.

Aaron Stanski — So those are those are the easy ones. I think the the second tier of things tends to be a little bit more difficult. And that tends to be like, hey, like meeting some of the you know maybe specific needs in and around your community. We’ve had lots of churches say that, hey, we didn’t realize there was such a need for you know special education, ah you know, you know, people with disabilities and things like that for our kids ministry. And so opening space for them actually really grew that ministry because we we weren’t even thinking about it.

Aaron Stanski — Same can be true for like adult education or like, you know, providing small group space for people that might not want to meet in homes, ah maybe people who recently accepted Christ, you know, young Christians, things like that. So there’s sort of a second tier of space that we take a look at to say, hey, is there something else where if we if we could provide that space, we’d help we’d see our ministry grow.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s interesting. Yeah, you can see, you know, the kind of those big three, the adult space, the kids, the parking, how those would bubble to the top pretty quickly. But there might actually be some of these other, you know, special needs for kids or adult meeting space that could that could actually be holding us back that that we’re not seeing clearly.

Rich Birch — Is this related to, I know there’s this whole area in your, I’m going to sound dumber than I actually am on this question. So, because I want to be like, I know a little bit about this, but just enough to be dangerous. This connects to like site plan type stuff too. I often wonder, like I’ve heard of churches, they’re like, oh, we’re going to add on to this thing. But then they bump into a site plan issue.

Aaron Stanski — Right.

Rich Birch — What is a site plan? And why is it that why should we be thinking ahead on that when we think about here are these things that take multiple years to wrestle through. I’ve heard of people like, oh, it took us two years to get the site plan sorted out with our town or, you know, X number of months whatever.

Aaron Stanski — Right. Right.

Rich Birch — How does that relate to this issue?

Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, part of it is just like, it it’s a process of planning ahead, right? And so being intentional and strategic with our planning.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Aaron Stanski — Hopefully the site plan doesn’t take a couple of years to pull together. That seems a little ridiculous to me…

Rich Birch — Excessive.

Aaron Stanski — …just as a church guy out here. But what we really need to do is is start to measure and say, okay, what are what are some of the need, once we have the constraints, what are the options that we have to solve those constraints? And if you go to try to start solving those things, whether it’s parking lot flow or access or more kid space or something, and your site taps you out, that’s an indication that you might need to relocate or look at a different strategy, multisite or something else like that.

Aaron Stanski — And so that master planning, that needs analysis looks at all of your needs and that would include like deferred maintenance, roofs, air conditioning units, all of those things, and then future planning, and then combining that with costing…

Rich Birch — Right.

Aaron Stanski — …and saying, okay, what are what are the steps we’re going to have to take to continue to make room for more as we grow? And so when we see churches doing an amazing job of this, they’re planning ahead. They have a strategy for their facilities, like they would um their programs and things like that.

Rich Birch — Yeah, groups ministry or whatever, yeah.

Aaron Stanski — And they’re saying, OK, over time, this is where we want to move to. And those same churches, I mean, they’re due they’re overlapping the the strategy for their physical spaces with um like hiring leaders, right? And getting the right staff people in place, people who have been there before, have gone through projects, have led multisite stuff. And so it’s ah it’s a planning, it’s process, and then it’s the the physical as well. And and having sort of an all-inclusive strategy for all three.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I’ve I got to be honest. I feel like a lot of the projects I’ve been involved with are mostly reactive. It’s like, we’re like, oh my goodness, we’re growing. Or like we had this building given to us. Or we’re thinking about, you know, this opportunity and we’ve kind of scrambled rather than, I love that idea of kind of being, hey, let’s be a bit more thoughtful, methodical. Hey, when we hit this, you know, we hit this level that should really trigger us to be thinking about that sort of thing. Is that what that looks like when I’m literally trying to imagine…

Aaron Stanski — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …what would it be like to be proactive on the facility…

Aaron Stanski — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …side rather than just constantly reactive.

Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, if we’re fighting fires, that’s a, that’s a bad sign, right?

Rich Birch — Right. Yeah. True.

Aaron Stanski — Especially since, I mean, and I deal with this a lot. I mean, churches will call us and say, Hey, we’re out of space. And I’m like, shoot, if we had started a year and a half ago, like we could be having a much, a much more productive conversation around some of this…

Rich Birch — Right.

Aaron Stanski — …rather than ah putting together a plan to get us through the next couple of years, instead of putting together a plan, they’ll actually like multiply impact over the next couple of years.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. And this is what this is, you know, editorial note for folks that are listening in. This is part of the reason why I love Aaron and his team is really, you you should see them as like ah a facility partner, a, you know, somebody that’s going to journey with you over an extended period of time. You actually do this thing called Needs Analysis that I’ve I’ve recommended multiple friends do. Can you kind of tell us about what that process is? I find, I you know, I bet you every couple of weeks I’m in conversation with somebody like, do you know so Aaron Stanski at Risepointe. You should talk to him about Needs Analysis. What is that? That’s

Aaron Stanski — Well, thanks for telling people about us, Rich. I appreciate it. No, um the Needs Analysis is a customized process for each individual church or ministry…

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Aaron Stanski — …where we get on site with you and your team for an entire day. And we really wrestle to the ground ah the issues that you’re facing with your facility, the questions that you have. And we we come back to you 30 days later with sort of a master plan, some some sketches, some recommendations around how to move your facility forward. And we do that alongside of some costs. So what are most churches spending in order to solve these issues? And so for a lot of church leaders, that’s what they need, right?

Rich Birch — Right.

Aaron Stanski — They need a report that says, okay, here’s the three options. Here’s what it costs. Great. Now we can pray through those things and figure out what God’s calling us to move forward. So ah most churches that work with Risepointe, like have us do a Needs Analysis at some point in time.

Rich Birch — Right

Aaron Stanski — It’s a great first step if we’re you know trying to get out ahead of things and really plan.

Rich Birch — Yeah. And it’s, it’s, uh, I think, as an outsider, as I’ve seen churches that have benefited from that, it’s the this great kind of peanut butter and honey or peanut butter and chocolate of it’s high level enough that, Hey, we can make some strategic decisions on this thing. Like it’s like, Hey, we’ve, we can see. But it’s detailed enough that we can dive in and get a real clear sense of where things are at. Obviously it’s not a full plan it doesn’t drive to the you know the the the final paint color on a wall somewhere.

Aaron Stanski — Right, right.

Rich Birch — But it does give you enough it gives you a enough knowledge as a leader to say, okay here’s something we should be thinking about. Here’s you know here’s here’s where here’s some decisions we need to be making in this next step. I think it would be great for folks.

Rich Birch — I’d love to pivot in one other direction.

Aaron Stanski — Sure.

Rich Birch — And then actually two other things I want to talk about. One, it’s little bit of a curve ball. It’s up on, you know, the tip of our tongues. Tariffs, ah you know, is this impacting on the facility side? You know, we got to but buy lumber. We had a project that we were a part of…

Aaron Stanski — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …where we literally delayed, because of the price of steel, we delayed the project by six months. Because we thought, hey, that we can, and we it worked out. The price of steel went down and we, because we we’re buying this giant hunk of steel for the roof for the roof of this building.

Aaron Stanski — Wow. That’s great.

Rich Birch — Talk to us about, you know, are you getting those calls? What do you think it’s going to impact your people? What do you think?

Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I mean, we’re definitely getting that question a lot. I mean, you know, there’s a lot more, you know, energy and hype around the social media than actually exists…

Rich Birch — Sure.

Aaron Stanski — …when you talk to contractors and suppliers and some things like that. We’re definitely seeing some prices go up and some prices go down. And really, there’s more of an emotional response to the tariffs at this point…

Rich Birch — Right.

Aaron Stanski — …than than an actual physical response that we’re seeing. So, yeah, I mean, I’m sure it’s going to affect some things positively and some things negatively. For most churches that are going through a construction project, though, there’s enough variety in what it is they have to buy…

Rich Birch — Right.

Aaron Stanski — …that if one item was a little bit more and another item was a little bit less, it typically would offset each other.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Aaron Stanski — I mean, in the example that you gave where you had like this huge chunk of steel, if you have someone that can predict what the the market is going to do and predict what ah the president may or may not tweet, then I would definitely recommend that strategy. Wait until prices come down.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Aaron Stanski — But for the most part, I mean, it’s unpredictable. There’s definitely a cost there. We’re just paying attention to it. We’re just like leaning into the things that we can control and we’re leading out with what God calls us to do.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Aaron Stanski — And, and we’re kind of leaving the the rest of him, you know?

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s very similar. I’ve said in other contexts around this, like, I don’t think we should let this hold us back. You know, they if you’re, we don’t want to be on the back foot. We want to be on the front foot.

Aaron Stanski — Yep.

Rich Birch — And, you know, the reality of it is, I think from a kingdom opportunity point of view, we’re in no better season than I’ve seen in my ministry career. I think it’s a great time for us to be out thinking about projects like this. And so, man, I I would hate for us to hesitate in this moment. I understand, even when I asked the question, I realized the tariff situation can change really quickly.

Aaron Stanski — Yeah.

Rich Birch — It’s like, you know, by the time we do this, maybe there’ll be no more tariffs.

Aaron Stanski — Yeah, who knows?

Rich Birch — But actually get it out. But but I wouldn’t want it to hold us back. Like let’s keep focused, friends, on what we, you know, what we’re called to do. And we want to be wise. We don’t want be silly, but I also don’t want us to to delay. I think we want to keep focusing on the future for sure.

Rich Birch — Related to that, would this whole idea of like, how do we keep you know leaning in and keep moving forward on this front? I was in a building recently that I was a part of. It was not a Risepointe project that was a part of. It’s it’s now 15 years old.

Aaron Stanski — Okay.

Rich Birch — I walked into that building and I was like, oh, wow, this feels very old. This feels out of date very quickly. When we built that building, it was like very modern. It felt very but it’s amazing how quickly things get kind of out of…

Aaron Stanski — Trend.

Rich Birch — I don’t know what. Trend, or whatever. And, and it didn’t, it wasn’t even that it was like we were using colors that… it just felt the thing felt tired. How do we avoid that? How do we, and are, are there rhythms we should be thinking about on this front? Like not always just thinking about the next campus, but going back and kind of backfilling, you know, our existing locations.

Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I mean, ah design changes and it it feels like design is changing about as rapidly as technology is changing these days. You know, so you know one of the things that we’re really kind of you know trying to lean into, you know is this this idea of creating like almost canvases. So how do we create canvases? How do we create you know sort of these these neutral palettes where we can come in and accent those things with things that feel on trend, relevant, ready to go. But then we can actually, you know, kind of replace some of those things, whether it’s furniture…

Rich Birch — Right.

Aaron Stanski — …or, you know, materials or signage or some things like that, so that it doesn’t like sit stagnant for 15 years. Anything that just sits there for 15 years ah is going to feel old. Even, i mean, even car manufacturers and what they’re trying to do to reinvent car designs at a much rapider pace than they used to.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Aaron Stanski — So a car that’s like five years old looks like an old Honda Accord versus the ones that just came out. Right?

Rich Birch — Yep.

Aaron Stanski — And so we’re going to see the same thing. And so, yeah, I mean, just trying, you know, trying not to be too trendy to begin…

Rich Birch — Right.

Aaron Stanski — …with is actually really going to help you out.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I think that makes sense. I can see that. When we’re doing our projects on the front end, let’s think about the fact that five years from now, we’re going to have to come back and do something.

Aaron Stanski — Yeah.

Rich Birch — So how do we design it in a way that, you know, we can make a few replacements, we don’t need to like, you know, rip out this entire wall or whatever, you know, it’s that’s interesting.

Rich Birch — You were telling me a story about a church. I want to make sure we tell that story…

Aaron Stanski — Oh, yeah.

Rich Birch — …to folks that are on, that are listening in. This is incredible. You should lean in friends. This is a really cool story of kind of how God has used this whole conversation ah to really help a church make impact.

Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I mean, I’ll go for a little bit here for sure, Rich. But yeah, I mean, I was just reflecting on the fact that, I mean, construction projects and raising money and and dealing with our facilities. I mean, this is not the reason most of us got into ministry, right?

Rich Birch — So true. Yes.

Aaron Stanski — And there’s definitely you know these seasons ah you know that God calls us to anyway ah that just require a different level of resilience and a different level of stick-to-it-edness.

Aaron Stanski — I was thinking ah ah back about Hebrews 10:35-36. It says, therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has great reward. For you have need of endurance so that when you’ve done the will of God, you may receive what is promised. Right? And the writer of Hebrews, it’s like, you know, um you know, really pushing this idea of resilience and living a life that glorifies God. Right? And he’s exhorting us to preserve, to persevere ah during hard times.

Aaron Stanski — And so I was just thinking about some of the most difficult projects at Risepointe that churches have kind of gone through. And one of them ah is actually the story of downtown Cornerstone Church. This is a church that we worked with in Seattle. And ah they were a church plant about 14, 15 years ago. So they did the whole portable thing for a few years. And then they actually leased an old nightclub. And so they moved into that nightclub, ah saw God do some tremendous things, but they really quickly, you know, kind of ran out of space there.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Aaron Stanski — And they’re just in a jurisdiction that doesn’t like church, right? Like they don’t they don’t they don’t like seeing, you know, very expensive real estate, you know, being taken up by nonprofits and things like that. And so they prayed for years ah to find a space, to find a building, and God provided this awesome building for them. That’s a story in and of itself.

Aaron Stanski — But it turned out that this this building was historically protected. And that means that they had to go through, you know, yeah we had to walk them through a completely other process with the historic board in the city of Seattle. And then the building itself had some really difficult challenges with code issues and energy. And it just felt like it kept dragging on and on. We had to seismically upgrade the building. So it it stood it stood fine for 60 years. But if there’s an earthquake, we have to seismically upgrade it so it won’t fall down. And it was just like delay after delay, either on the permit side and stuff. And then, of course, this is right in the middle of COVID and trying to even get materials to the site.

Rich Birch — Oh my goodness.

Aaron Stanski — And, you know, ah we got to walk alongside them through all of that.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Aaron Stanski — And the week before they moved in, ah their senior pastor, Adam Sennett, he wrote he wrote this in a blog about what spaces mean to them as a church. And so I was just going kind of share this with your audience.

Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.

Aaron Stanski — He said, he said this about their experience: “We endured a once-in-a-century pandemic, political chaos and social upheaval all at once. COVID effectively cut our church in half. Yet by God’s grace, here we are stronger, more mature and deeply rooted than ever.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Aaron Stanski — “God uses spaces. Yes, of course, God uses people, but notice that he uses people in specific spaces. Gardens, arcs, prison cells, tents, deserts, whale bellies, castles, baskets, stables, islands, and more. Such spaces are unexpected miniature stages upon which his story continues to unfold in ways big and small. Recognizing the temporary nature of God’s stages helps us be thankful for them in every season, without growing too attached to them. After all as in any play the stage is merely a platform for the drama.”

Rich Birch — So good.

Aaron Stanski — And so then he goes on and talks about you know some their story and their buildings but then he comes back and says: “So DCC [Downtown Cornerstone Church], let’s remember this as we move into our new building this weekend. Let’s pray that the Lord will use this space as yet another stage for his unfolding drama of redemption in Seattle, and through Seattle to the nations. Let’s pray that he would use this space as a gospel outpost and megaphone for generations to come. Imagine how many people might come to know Jesus there. Imagine how many missionaries and church planters may be sent from there. Imagine how many hearts will be thrilled with the excellence of Jesus, sins defeated, marriages reconciled, and legacies forever redeemed there. Let it be, Lord.”

Rich Birch — So good.

Aaron Stanski — And so like when I when I hear that story and like, man, what a beautiful written testimony, but what it took to get him there was so hard. I mean, four or five years…

Rich Birch — Right.

Aaron Stanski — …of like slogging through it and wrestling through it and dealing with the city. But on the other side, is is even more room to be able to invite their neighbors, you know, invite the people of Seattle to, to come and hear the gospel. So it’s just ah an amazing testimony to kind of walk through that. We’re going to be posting some ah brand new pictures and stuff of that project up on our website pretty soon here.

Rich Birch — Oh, cool. We’ll link to it for sure.

Aaron Stanski — So, so stay tuned for that. Yeah.

Rich Birch — Dude, that’s great. I love that. What a great encouragement. Like these projects are like, we don’t want to make it sound like it’s just super simple. Like all you do, it’s work. Like it is a ton of effort. It’s literally, I don’t know, hundreds of thousands of, feels like hundreds of thousands of decisions. It’s like, you know, you you’re, you’re pushed through. They all have complexity in them. You got to raise money to make it happen. And then, you know, then the hard part comes, actually doing it.

Rich Birch — But I love that encouragement, even for maybe people that are listening in today that are in the midst of some of that push to realize, no, there is something on the other side of that. And I could say that even in my own church, where the campus I attend, we were portable for 17 years, and which is crazy.

Aaron Stanski — Yeah.

Rich Birch — And then now we’re in a, you know, we’ve just since last fall, we’ve been in a building. And just recently, we’re recording this shortly after Easter. And I was standing in the lobby of that location and, you know, record attendance. And I I was really struck by, we were giving away Bibles to people. And we’re handing out Bibles to folks. And I was like, so excited to see all of these people. And I thought, man, like all of that work we went through was worth it for this. Like all of that, if, if, if all it’s, if all of, all of this is comes at the other, at the other end of all of that comes this amazing life change, man, let’s just get after it.

Aaron Stanski — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Let’s, let’s figure out what it looks like and and do the hard work, do the heavy lifting to, to make it happen and not be super intimidated. Like, oh, there’s no way we could ever do this. Like, no, you can. You can get experts, friends like Aaron and his team to help you with it, uh, to get out the other end of that.

Aaron Stanski — Yeah. And part of the hard work, right. Is just, is being able to navigate some of these like really difficult challenges.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.

Aaron Stanski — You know, like you mentioned, it’s like a, it’s a leadership exercise in walking your church through this. It’s a project management exercise in kind of walking through these things.

Rich Birch — Yep. That’s great.

Aaron Stanski — And, you know, I mean, we’ve seen inflation kind of go crazy, right, over the over the course of the last couple of years. Tithing hasn’t gone crazy like inflation has, right?

Rich Birch — Yes.

Aaron Stanski — And so we have this situation where, you know, we have less dollars than we used to, and those dollars only buy us half what they what they did a few years ago, right?

Rich Birch — Right, what they used to buy. Yeah, yeah.

Aaron Stanski — And so we have to be really clear about how are we deploying those dollars and and what are we accomplishing with these projects…

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Aaron Stanski — …versus all of the other things we could spend on.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. And that reinforces if it sounds like I’m trying to get you to call Aaron and his team, trust your instincts. All of that is because, you know, in an environment like we’re in that you just described there, it’s even more reason why early in this process, you need to find friends like Aaron to say, hey, how can please help us with this?

Rich Birch — You know, this for most church leaders, a process like this is a, you know, it could be a once in a career experience. It’s a, it could be a once every decade or once every couple decade experience. And you need to get someone like Aaron and Risepointe on your size or them specifically. There’s a resource we’re going to link to. I want to make sure people pick up on this. This is 10 Things to Get Right Before You Build. Tell us about this resource and we’ll, we’ll make sure we link to it.

Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, we just wanted to, I mean, we polled a few of our previous clients and said, Hey, going back, what are some things that you wish you would have gotten in place first before you started the process?

Rich Birch — Yep.

Aaron Stanski — And some of it’s pretty self-explanatory. Some of them, you might be like, man, I’m doing good. Check, check, check. Oh, that’s something I didn’t think of before. And so just kind of trying to provide a resource to kind of get your head, start thinking about if you think you might have a project coming in the next couple of years, definitely grab that resource. Think that through. Walk that through with your leadership team. If it if it elicits questions, if there’s things that you’re not sure about, reach out. We’d love to connect with you um on that.

Rich Birch — That’s great. You can look for the link in the show notes here. It’ll be in the email and all that we sent out this week too. Yeah. Number two, I thought was interesting team consensus and this I would echo. You know, we’ve got to make sure we have the conversation upfront and get a real clear picture and be all on the same page. Because when we say we’re thinking about a project like this, we can have multiplicity of different ideas.

Aaron Stanski — That’s right.

Rich Birch — And that’s, that’s where having a trusted partner like Risepointe actually can help you with that process. Let’s get let’s do a needs analysis, get a sense of where we’re actually at. What are the actual constraints that are that we should tackle first? Here’s what that could look like. Here’s the scope scale of that kind of thing. Could be super helpful for sure.

Rich Birch — Well, I want to give you the final word here, Aaron. What would you say encouragement or challenge would give to church leaders today as we wrap up today’s episode?

Aaron Stanski — Oh man. I just say, you know, as I get to travel across the country and and hang out with a lot of your amazing listeners and a lot of just amazing churches, it’s so cool to hear the story of life change that is happening at the local level.

Rich Birch — So true.

Aaron Stanski — And I think keeping, you know, keeping our eyes and our perspective on what God is doing in and through our communities. We were sharing at staff meeting today, one of the one of the churches that we worked with, they baptized 47 people last weekend.

Rich Birch — Amazing.

Aaron Stanski — And I mean, we can get really excited about like building launches or projects or some things like that, but man, 47 people making a decision…

Rich Birch — That’s incredible.

Aaron Stanski — …to follow Christ and getting baptized. I mean, that’s what, that’s what it’s all about. And so, I mean, if you’re, if you’re scared of going through a big project or you’re not sure, you know, where to turn to, we would love to come alongside you and partner in with you in that, so that you don’t have to carry that burden alone, so that you do have a trusted partner that can walk you through a difficult process, ah but one that we’ve done hundreds of times before. So you have any questions on that, we’d love to connect, you know, definitely reach out.

Rich Birch — Yeah, where can people go online if we want to send them to to connect with you?

Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, just go to risepointe.com. That’s Risepointe—we got an E at the end there—dot com. There’s a “schedule a call” button. You just fill out some information about your church and where you’re located and then that just links right up to our Zoom account. And then myself or one of our other architects will get that call scheduled with you. We want to hear about your church uniquely. What are some of the unique challenges that you guys are facing and really kind of understand that to see how we can serve.

Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much, Aaron. Appreciate you, sir. We’ll have to have you back on. I’d love to have you on in the future.

Aaron Stanski — Yeah, let’s do it.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Appreciate you being here today, sir. Take care.

Aaron Stanski — Thanks, Rich.

Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast during our All About Multisite month. Today we’re talking with David Ashcraft, CEO and President of the Global Leadership Network (GLN), and former Senior Pastor of LCBC Church in Pennsylvania.

Are you wrestling with growing pains as your church multiplies? How does an expanding multisite church keep its vision clear and equip its staff and leaders? Tune in as David shares his invaluable experience leading a thriving multisite church and now, leading an organization that is equipping leaders worldwide to make a lasting impact.

To learn more about the Global Leadership Network and register for the upcoming Summit, visit www.globalleadership.org and use the promo code GLS25UNSEM to get $10 off the registration rate online or at local host sites.

Inside unSeminary Extra Credit, we’ve created the Restructuring Readiness Checklist—a powerful tool to help you assess whether your current staff model and systems are holding you back. Inspired by LCBC’s journey to 19 campuses, this resource helps you:

This resource is exclusively available through unSeminary Extra Credit, our affordable membership that fuels the podcast and provides you with valuable tools like this and many others!

Click here to join unSeminary Extra Credit and get instant access to this resource and more!

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. You’ve reached us during our All About Multisite Month, where we’re having conversations with leaders from prevailing multisite churches. And today, we’ve really got a two-for-one. We’ve got a leader who has been in the trenches leading an incredibly prevailing multisite church, and now is leading an organization that’s literally making difference all over the world. It’s our privilege to have David Ashcraft with us. He is the CEO and president of GLN. If you’re unaware, GLN is the Global Leadership Network, is a global organization passion about inspiring and equipping leaders to transform the world for the better.

Rich Birch — David was formerly the senior pastor of a church, LCBC, which is in Pennsylvania, a multi-site church with—if I’m counting correctly, although it’s hard to count, they have so many—19 campuses, and he’s also involved in lots of other great stuff. David, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.

David Ashcraft — Thank you, Rich. I appreciate the opportunity to be here. It’s fun to talk to you and your audience. So thank you.

Rich Birch — Oh, thank you. I appreciate you taking the time to be here. Well, for folks that are unaware, why don’t you kind of share a bit of the story of LCBC’s growth, from a single location of less than a couple hundred people to 19 locations serving 25,000 plus people. Give us I know it’s like, summarize all that in three minutes. I get that’s hard, but kind of tell us a little bit of that story for folks that are unaware that don’t know LCBC.

David Ashcraft — Yeah, definitely. Well, Rich, LCBC stands for Lives Changed by Christ. And so we just say that’s who we are. We’re a community of people whose lives have been, continue to be changed by Jesus Christ. And in 1991, I had opportunity to come to this little church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, actually Manheim, a small town in Pennsylvania, about 150 people.

David Ashcraft — And I had been a pastor in Dallas, Texas. And so God brought us here to what all of my friends in Texas called the Rust Belt. And they thought, why in the world would you go to the Rust Belt? But you God brought us here.

Rich Birch — Why are you going there? Can anything good come from Manheim?

David Ashcraft — Exactly. Yeah. So the first five or six years were incredibly difficult. Just trying to figure out who we were, what we were trying to accomplish as a church. Had three different board chairmen over three years get up in the middle of meetings and resign.

Rich Birch — Wow.

David Ashcraft — And so I’d say that only to say I understand what it’s like to have turmoil with the board, and turmoil in the church. There was there was a guy named Abe, and every time I would speak, he would tell me all the things that I was doing wrong. He would stand up in congregational meetings back then. And back then, congregational meetings were well attended because there were going to be fireworks so they wanted to be there to see what was going to happen.

Rich Birch — Right.

David Ashcraft — And so anyway, we somehow survived those first five or six years and God began to really work and do amazing things. So ultimately over a 32 year period, we grew from 150 people to 22,000. Two and a half years ago, the church has continued to grow. And so it’s about 25,000 people now. And we got into multisite in about 2003 or ’04. We had grown to about 8,000 people in our first location. And several things were happening.

David Ashcraft — One, our little town of Manheim has about 4,000 people in it. And so there were people driving 45 minutes, an hour to come. And then the township told us that we were taking up too much space. We were creating there were problems on the roads. And so they said, we couldn’t expand our facility anymore. And we were devastated and thought, oh man, you know that’s going to kill us as a church. And yet multisites were just kind of starting then.

David Ashcraft — And so we went around the country, looked at several different models and landed on one and thought, okay, we can do this. And so the fun thing is now, if there are 25,000 people attending LCBC, 20,000 or so are at other locations.

Rich Birch — It’s amazing.

David Ashcraft — And so it’s just fun to watch that see.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s amazing.

David Ashcraft — Yeah, so God’s been doing cool things. It’s just been fun to be a part of that. And one of our kind of unwritten rules all the way through it was let’s not do anything stupid to mess up what God is doing. And oftentimes I think church leaders do stupid things and it messes up what God’s doing and they miss out on being a part of what God really wants. So.

Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. There’s there’s a ton to unpack here. And I like I feel like we could do five episodes on the stuff you just talked about there. And friends, I’ve had a chance to visit multiple locations of LCBC and you just rolled over it. You were like, well, you know at that point we were 8,000 people. Manheim has 4,000. I remember the first time I was at that that location, it is a mind bender to be like… This is not like I’m used to suburban, large, you know, population areas. And the fact that LCBC has thrived and continues to thrive is I love it. It’s a great story to to kind of just to be a part of.

Rich Birch — Now, you’ve pivoted to this new role as president and CEO of the Global Leadership Network. Connect those two together. How does leading at LCBC connect with what you’re currently doing?

David Ashcraft — Yeah, so probably about 10 or 12 years ago, Rich, had opportunity to sit in a group with Jim Collins, the good to great author and other books. And in that group, there were probably about 15 of us. And so he’s talking about his levels of leadership. And in my mind, I’m hoping that I’m his level five, which is his highest level. But as he’s talking, he said, you’ll never be a level five leader until you’ve actually left your organization, the organization you’re leading.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

David Ashcraft — And when you’re gone, it’s actually better when you’re gone than when you’re there. And so that kind of messed me up because I was hoping that one, that I was already a level five leader.

Rich Birch — Right.

David Ashcraft — And I was probably on the dark side of my mind, hoping that when I stepped away from LCBC, that there would be a little bit of turmoil and people would be crying. I told the congregation I was hoping for weeping and gnashing of teeth when I stepped away. And he just said, if that happens, then you’re a bad leader. And so it started me on a trajectory to say, how do I need to be setting things up for LCBC so they’ll thrive when I’m gone?

David Ashcraft — So that was kind of the first step. And so I mapped out a 10 or 12 year plan to kind of work to that direction. And so about two and a half years ago, it just was the right time for me to step away. And Jason Mitchell, who’s the new pastor, was ready. He’d been a part of our team for a long time. And had spent six or seven years getting him ready for that leadership role. And the church was ready and so I stepped away. And told the congregation, I’m not retiring, but I don’t know exactly what I’m going to be doing.

David Ashcraft — And so I had been on the board at the GLN for a number of years. We’ve hosted the summit for a long time. There was a change in leadership there. And, So they invited me to step into that role. It was one of those kind of things where um I was wrestling, trying to think, okay, is Ruth, my wife, is she how’s she going to receive this? Is she going be happy? Is she not?

David Ashcraft — And so you know how when you have something to say at home and and if things are going real well, then you don’t want to say anything because you don’t want to disrupt that it’s going really well and you’re connecting well. If you’re not connecting well, then I don’t want to anything because I don’t make things worse. So I was kind of hem-hawing around for three or four days to bring it up to her. And once I did, she was like, oh, it’s a no-brainer. It’s like you’re made for this.

David Ashcraft — And um and then the other thing she had told me probably two or three weeks before that, I’d been away from LCBC for about three or four months. And she just at one point sat me down said, you need to go find something else to lead. And then she followed that very quickly with, but it’s not me.

Rich Birch — That’s great.

David Ashcraft — I was trying to give too much direction to the house and she wanted to me out. So so anyway, um so stepped into that role.

Rich Birch — I love that.

David Ashcraft — Yeah.

Rich Birch — I’ve joked in other contexts about my wife, Christine. I’ve said, you know, the voice of the Lord and the voice of Christine, they’re they sound very similar. Like there’s ah there’s definitely a rhyme there between ah those two. I love that.

David Ashcraft — Rich, it’s funny you say that because one of our early decisions at LCBC, we would meet as a board on we met every third Monday night of the month, and um we would bring up a decision, it discussion, would make a decision that night. 

David Ashcraft — And then we would go home and we’d come back the next month and would all say, oh, that probably wasn’t the best decision. And so we would like to say that we went home and prayed about it for a month. What really was happening is we were going home telling our spouses. And they were going, that’s a terrible decision. And then we’d all come back and say, yeah that probably wasn’t such a good decision. So we came up with an unwritten rule that we’ll discuss something one month, come back after praying about it and after talking to our spouses about it and make the decision the following month. So, yes, it’s amazing how the Holy Spirit, the voice of the Lord, whatever you call it, seems to speak through our spouses as well.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s so good. Well, I’d love to kind of dig in a little bit on the LCBC story. As as a lead pastor, part of your role is to cast vision, provide clarity. And and there’s been a tremendous amount of change from that, you know, you know the town of Manheim saying, hey, you can’t keep growing, all the way to, okay now what it appears like as an outsider, and and I’ve said this behind your back, behind the church’s back, I’m like, there’s lots of churches that talk about wanting to reach their entire state. LCBC is getting busy doing it. Like, you know, there’s all kinds of great things going on.

Rich Birch — Discuss you know talk me through when you’re in that kind of lead role, keeping your team aligned and keeping them around the vision, how, what were some of the things that you did as a communicator, as a leader to ensure that people were aligned? To, you know, to help things, you know, continue to kind of stay focused as a church?

David Ashcraft — Yeah, well, Rich, one of the things, and it’s been said countless times, I don’t know who said it first, but vision leaks. And what we tend to do as leaders is we say it once, and we assume everybody’s gotten it, and they’re not ever going to forget it. But it does leak. And I think probably when I first heard that statement, maybe 20 or 30 years ago, the idea was you needed to repeat it every 28 days or so. And I think the reality now is you have to say it a whole lot more because what happens…

Rich Birch — It’s true.

David Ashcraft — …you know, the number of weeks that people actually show up in church. I mean, I’ve heard everything from it used to be 1.6 times a month to now I hear a lot of people saying once every six weeks people show up. And so if you don’t say it a lot, then people aren’t going to hear it. And if you don’t say it a lot, they’re going to forget it, even if they’re there.

David Ashcraft — And so, and we always just focused on let’s be very clear of what we’re about. And it’s just introducing more people to Jesus and then together fully following him. And so we’d find different creative ways to say it, but we’d say the same thing over and over and over. And I think sometimes people worry about if you repeat it too much, they’re going to get tired of it. But that wasn’t our case. And sometimes we try to get too creative and people don’t even know it’s the same vision or you’re saying the same thing.

Rich Birch — Right.

David Ashcraft — So I think redundancy is real important.

Rich Birch — And and what how did that work its way into your rhythms as a communicator? Like, were you finding ways to weave that in on Sunday morning through, is it just kind of every way possible? What did that look like? How did you kind of think about that? How do how do we keep that in front of people?

David Ashcraft — Yeah, so I don’t know that it’s so much saying, okay, let’s talk about our vision, but you just kind of weave it in a natural conversation…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

David Ashcraft — …and just becomes who you are, I think. And so even with the staff, I think the leader’s responsibility is kind of set the boundaries or the guardrail of where you’re going as an organization. And then my job if I saw starting to get out of the boundaries or out of the guidelines, guardrails that were going to take us towards introducing more people to Jesus, or fully following him, then it’s my job to say, oh wait a minute, we’re straying some. And because what happens, Rich, is everybody in the church has some good idea of what you ought to be doing as a church. And so they’ll come and I mean, just umpteen different. Your imagination can run wild of what it is. And they will say God spoke to them and this is what we ought to be doing as a church. And so we would constantly evaluate and say, okay, that may be a good thing, but it’s not best for us.

David Ashcraft — And so I felt like one of my jobs was to kind of be the gatekeeper. And so we just say to people, man, that’s a good thing you’re involved in. It’s cool that God put that on your heart, but here’s where we are as an organization. This is what we’re striving for. And son man, we’ll do everything we can to encourage you as you go do that good thing, but we’re going to stay focused on what’s best for us. And so I would say the last 10 years or so at LCBC, for me, a lot it was just saying, man, that’s good, but it’s not us.

Rich Birch — Right.

David Ashcraft — And we’re not going to kind of step but into that that area you want us to step into.

Rich Birch — Let’s double click on that because I think that is um that’s a real tension ah for particularly senior leaders to hold this balance of because there are sometimes those ideas are actually great and and they’re innovative. And LCBC is, as an outsider, I would say that’s an innovative organization. You guys have tried a bunch of different stuff, but have been able to stay aligned. How, what kind of filters were do you use or have you used to try to filter out that? Okay, what’s just a good idea or what’s maybe a God idea that, Hey, we should take a risk on ah to to try something here, that and we’ll see maybe it’ll change the trajectory of what, where God’s leading us.

David Ashcraft — Yeah, you know, it’s funny, Rich, when when we were small, 150 or 200 people, it was easier to try new things because if it didn’t work, it’s not like we’ we’re going to hurt all that much. And yet it was hard then, too, because if we tried something and it failed, the church wasn’t big enough to bounce back from from a failure.

David Ashcraft — But some of the guiding principles for us, I mean, one, we constantly talk about the 90-10 rule for us. And I know everybody’s heard of the 80-20. For us, 90-10 means that you can’t keep everybody happy. And what I watch a lot of pastors do is they try to keep everybody in the church happy. And so if you come to me with a good idea, then I don’t want to hurt your feelings, Rich. And so, yes, we’ll do your idea. But then somebody else comes along, yes, we’ll do your idea. And then all of a sudden, you’re doing so many things…

Rich Birch — Right.

David Ashcraft — …that you’re not doing anything well. And so when we talk about 90-10, we just said we’d rather 90% of the people be wildly enthusiastic about us. 10% of the people can be wildly upset with us and we’re okay with that.

Rich Birch — Love it.

David Ashcraft — And so we just kind of operate that way. And and so we say, here’s who we are. Here’s how we behave. Here’s how we’re, where we’re going. If it’s not for you, that’s totally okay. But if it is for you, then jump in. And so it pretty well works out.

David Ashcraft — I don’t know that we’ve ever hit 10% wildly upset with us. Where that rule has helped us is we’ll do something and it doesn’t quite go the way we think, or there may be people upset with us and we’ll get all worried about it. And then we’ll say, okay, wait minute, let’s stop. We’ve 22,000 people, or now 25,000. We just got 40 or 50 emails from people that weren’t happy. So let’s say 10% of 25,000 is 2,500.

Rich Birch — Right.

David Ashcraft — So we got 40 or 50 emails. We’re fine.

Rich Birch — Yes.

David Ashcraft — We’ve got another couple thousand to go and then we’ll start getting worried about it. So just not trying to please everybody was a big piece of it.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

David Ashcraft — And then constantly, is this is this a good thing or is it a great thing? And let’s focus on the great things.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. yeah I had a mentor early on in my ministry talk about, he said the exact same thing, he but the way he cast it was he was like, we really should have about 10% of the church upset with us at any given moment. If we’re not, then we’re probably not taking new ground.

David Ashcraft — Amen.

Rich Birch — They, you know, and I was like, oh – that that has stuck with me for sure.

David Ashcraft — Exactly. Yeah. And we would definitely say the same thing where, man, we’re not getting much, many complaints. So maybe we need to be trying some different things.

Rich Birch — Yeah, let’s try something new.

David Ashcraft — The other thing we kind yeah, the other thing we kind of learned as we went, Rich, is you know, a lot of times young leaders want to try things that could be devastating to the church. And what’s nice is we’ve gotten bigger and we’ve got more locations. If we’ve got an idea…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

David Ashcraft — …then let’s try it in a location and see how it goes there. And instead of doing something that’s going to sink the whole ship, then it might have a negative impact on that one location, but at least it’s not going to hit all of the locations.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

David Ashcraft — And if it works well, then we’ll go ahead and spread it to the whole church. So there’s some advantages of multisite from that standpoint.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Well, kind of sticking with that same theme, you know, LCBC has experienced incredible growth, you know, in a lot of ways. It’s like your history is, you know, the the shift to multisite was a transformative moment. You know, the the the growth of the church has accelerated, um you know, beyond Manheim and all these other locations.

Rich Birch — That has, I’m assuming, has forced a certain amount of organizational change over the years. You’ve had to make some shifts. What what did some of that restructuring look like? Very few churches, you know, some of the stats show that um close to 50% of multisite churches aren’t getting beyond three locations.

Rich Birch — And so, and some of that, I think, is because of some of this restructuring. What were some of those that was that restructuring that you went under, that you led the church under, that you think were particularly helpful as you look back on it to accelerate the mission?

David Ashcraft — So Rich, early on, I used to listen to Carl George. Fuller Institute used to have a number of different people. And so they would, back then they were cassette tapes.

Rich Birch — Yes. Love it.

David Ashcraft — Carl George was one. And he had a thing he talked about where churches are kind of like animals and animals are animals, churches are churches. But then he would say, um not all animals are alike. And so he would talk about a mouse and he’d compare a mouse to a cat, to a dog, and say they’re all animals, but they’re very, very different. A cat is very different from a dog that’s different from a horse or and so on. And he would say churches are the same thing. Just because you’re a church doesn’t mean all churches are equal.

David Ashcraft — And so he’d say a mouse church might be 35 people, a cat might be 75, a dog 200 and so forth. And his whole point was, as you grow from a mouse to a cat…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

David Ashcraft — …to a dog, to a horse, you’ve got to restructure every time because you’re a whole different animal.

Rich Birch — Yep.

David Ashcraft — And so I would say over the course of 32 years, we restructured probably six or seven times at least.

Rich Birch — Right.

David Ashcraft — And we could tell when it was time. And it was some of it was just feeling, but you’d start noticing that communication wasn’t going well in the organization, that people were frustrated with each other. And it wasn’t, you know your tendency is to think, oh it’s just some bad actors on the team. And it really wasn’t that, it was a lack of clarity. What are we trying to do? It was a lack of communication lines.

David Ashcraft — And so we would simplify and say, okay, let’s go and simplify. Let’s make sure everybody has direct lines of communication and redundancy. And so we did that probably, like I said, six or seven times in the process.

Rich Birch — Well, that’s a good insight. Even the fact that because I think we can if we’re the people that led the restructuring last time, we can really love our restructuring. We think, hey, that was a great you know that this is the perfect system. We took all this time, effort and energy, pain, all this pain to get to this restructuring. And then now here we are two years later…

David Ashcraft — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …and it can be hard to give that up. I think that’s a great insight. Hey, we had to restructure six, seven times over all those years. And, you know, that’s that’s a pretty regular cadence to be thinking about that.

David Ashcraft — Yeah.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

David Ashcraft — Rich, I don’t know. You made the comment that a lot of multisite churches are struggling and don’t get past three or four. And I don’t know if we’re sharing strong biases or if you want to hear strong biases…

Rich Birch — Sure. Sure. Yeah, absolutely.

David Ashcraft — …but I have a strong bias towards that.

Rich Birch — That’s why we have you on.

David Ashcraft — Yeah. Well, what I watch happen all the time is guys decide, churches decide they want to go multisite. Typically, they go multisite. One, they want to see their reach expand. But oftentimes, they’ll also be somebody else on staff. So if I’m the senior pastor and you’re one of my associate pastors, I start thinking, okay, Rich has strong leadership gifts. He’s got strong speaking gifts. Rich is getting antsy to go and lead on his own. And so I’ll send him out and he can start a new location for LCBC.

David Ashcraft — And you want, Rich wants to do it so badly. He says, yes, I’ll, you know I’ll follow the party line and I’ll, I’ll be LCBC, whatever. And I’m wanting it to happen so badly. Then I’m that’s a great way to send you out. And so we do that and you go out, maybe somebody else on staff, and all of a sudden we’ve got three locations.

David Ashcraft — But what happens over a couple of years is you drift apart and you start realizing you do have speaking gifts, you do have leadership gifts. And before you know it, you start thinking, even though our communities are only 20 miles apart, we’re just different in this community than you are in your community, 10 or 20 miles away. And so I really need to lead differently than what you did at the original location.

David Ashcraft — All of a sudden you get this split, this divide and frustration. And I just, um my strong bias, Rich, is I think if you want to scale, if you want to go beyond three, four, five, or six locations, um video teaching is almost a necessity.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

David Ashcraft — Otherwise you’re going to have, and to my knowledge, I don’t know of any churches that are truly multisite, um, that have more than six or seven with live teachers. There are some that say they do, but they’re almost like little denominations. Their churches all have the same name…

Rich Birch — Right.

David Ashcraft — …but each church is very independent, doing its own thing. And so I just have a real strong bias towards video teaching and, and replicating the model, not just sending out new people.

David Ashcraft — And there’s nothing wrong with me sending you out to a new location if I know that essentially what I’m doing is planting a new church 20 minutes away. And that’s…

Rich Birch — Right, right. But that’s different than multisite.

David Ashcraft — Yeah, and that’s a great strategy for planting churches, but it’s not multisite.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

David Ashcraft — And if you really want to scale, then you’ve got to replicate the model.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. And statistically, that’s true. The larger a multisite church is and the more locations it has, the more it implements video as a core teaching strategy. So you statistically, you see it’s it it is, um and I’ll say that because but lots of even teaching pastors have this bias against video teaching because it feels like, oh, no, we should find someone to do that.

Rich Birch — And I’m I’m not a teaching guy. And I’ve had this conversation, ah you know, hundreds of times with with teaching guys where I’m like, no, like this, the what you’re doing is super unique. And it is core to what the church is doing. It’s three quarters of the reason why people attend, statistically. Man, we’ve got to, you know, I think that’s great. That’s a good I would I hold the same strong bias. So I agree, um which is.

David Ashcraft — Yeah. And Rich, I would say it also just helps you clarify everything…

Rich Birch — Yes.

David Ashcraft — …if you know you if you know you’re doing that, because then you know what kind of campus pastors to hire.

Rich Birch — Right.

David Ashcraft — And so we’ll just say if if you’re wanting to be a teacher, and we’ve got a couple of our campus pastors that are great teachers, and so they’re part of our teaching team.

Rich Birch — Yep.

David Ashcraft — But if you really want to be a teacher, ah campus pastor for us, it’s not where you ought to land.

Rich Birch — Yep.

David Ashcraft — And um our campus pastors are incredible leaders. We say so they’re the strongest leaders in our organization, but they’re not wanting to teach on a regular basis. And that’s not, it shouldn’t even be in their skill set for most of them. So they’ve got to communicate and talk from the stage. They’ve got to teach in smaller environments, but if they want to preach, it’s not the right place.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Let’s pivot in a slightly different direction. Talk more about your kind of own, your own personal leadership leading through all of that and your, and and about how you balanced all that out. Just, want to honor you in front of our audience. You know, they’re good things radiate off of LCBC when people talk about you behind your back. They are thankful to lead, to be led by you. You know, there, people don’t have to say nice things to me, but they do. And, and that is, unfortunately is ah is a notable exception. And and you seem to, you’ve you’ve held your life together. You know, you you haven’t train wrecked, you know, your family, ah you know, and and all of that. I honor you for all of that. That…

David Ashcraft — Thank you.

Rich Birch — That’s incredible. But talk us through what practices have you adopted to balance the demands of leading an aggressively growing ministry and your own life, your own kind of internal life, family wellbeing, that sort of thing. What what have you done to try to keep that all together?

David Ashcraft — So I’ll go in a couple different directions, Rich. On a professional level, ah just realizing I can’t do it myself. I need a team around me. And so my practice was always to hire the best possible person I could. And there’s a tendency sometimes to if you are on a scale of 1 to 10, if you see yourself as an 8, then there’s a tendency to hire 5, 6 and 7s, people that you can still be a little bit stronger so that you’re perceived to be the leader. And for me, I just said, I’m looking to hire people that can be better than me…

Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good.

David Ashcraft — …in their specific area of expertise. And so when we were smaller as a church, we didn’t have the money to hire experts yet, but we hired people that we thought could become experts. And so then I would meet with them and we’d go visit other churches and we’d figure out what style we wanted to be.

David Ashcraft — I would keep them pretty close to me the first 6 months or so, maybe even 12 months. And um then once they were able to take off, I would just say, and the mantra we always had that I had with everybody we hired was I really want you to be the best kid min person, the best student ministry person…

Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s good.

David Ashcraft — …so that people are going to come from all around the country to learn how to do student ministry from you. And I want you to take it way further than I ever could possibly take it.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

David Ashcraft — And so I think part of our, and I don’t want to use the word success, part of our growth was that we just kept hiring people, I kept hiring people better than me. And didn’t want to limit it that way. So from a professional standpoint, we would do that.

David Ashcraft — And then personally, um you know, sometimes people complain about the busyness of ministry, but one of the beauties we have is we’ve got flexibility. And so we’re not locked into an eight to five schedule. And yes, we have to work on the weekends, but we get to take other times off. And so like when my son was fourth, fifth, sixth grade, he was into baseball. So I coached as a little league team for three years. I knew nothing about baseball, but I got other people to help me with that. But I was, I was able to do that. And so another kind of job I might not have been able to. So yeah, we work a lot of hours and, you know, 55, oftentimes 60 hours a week, but we’ve got flexibility.

Rich Birch — Yep.

David Ashcraft — And so I think really putting the family first that way was real important. My kids now are grown. Our, my son is one of our campus pastors. My daughter just stepped away from being a student min director at one of our locations for 10 years. And it’s real fun to have them involved and be a part of that.

David Ashcraft — And, the one other thing I’ll just say real quick is…

Rich Birch — Yeah.

David Ashcraft — …one of our mantras at LCBC is let’s not do anything stupid to mess up what God is doing.

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

David Ashcraft — And so, I mean, stupid is a lot of things. It could be just relational issues where you and I get crossways and we don’t resolve it quickly.

Rich Birch — Right.

David Ashcraft — And so one of our unwritten rules is keep short accounts and don’t let things fester.

Rich Birch —That’s good.

David Ashcraft — Stupid could be crossing or playing with lines around morality or sexuality that we shouldn’t be playing in. And so we get burned all of a sudden. So we’re just constantly saying, man, let’s not do anything stupid, not to mess up what God’s doing because he’s doing great stuff.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. You know, kind of tagging on, just double clicking on that. Sometimes you’ll see it’s like, well, the lead person, they seem to have life balance, but the rest of the team, like that, not so much. But that isn’t the case with what I’ve seen. And obviously, I don’t know all your team, but with the people I know in your orbit, that seems to have rippled out Anything that you’ve done to model that for your people, to try to ripple that down? I love that, you know, let’s not be stupid. Or is there anything else on that front to kind of model that with your team?

David Ashcraft — Well, so even in the early days, I was a senior pastor when I came. And it’s always funny that I was a senior pastor. I was the only pastor…

Rich Birch — Sure.

David Ashcraft — …for the first about four years.

Rich Birch — Yep.

David Ashcraft — And we were gonna hire a worship leader. And we did hire a worship leader. When he came in, he, like a lot of worship leaders, he’s not most creative early in the morning. He’s most creative late at night.

David Ashcraft — And so his hours, I gave him lots of freedom. And as long as he was putting in the 45 hours or so that we were asking, then it was fine. But I had an elder come to me and say, well, I come by the office on Monday or Tuesday morning and you know it’s 8:30 and—his name was Brian—Brian’s not in the office, and we need him in the office. And so I just said, well, so wait a minute, let’s think about this. Did we hire him to be a sit in his office from 8:30 to 5, Monday through Friday? Did we hire him to be great on the weekend and great to lead people in worship? And so my philosophy is always whatever it takes to be best at your job. So we try to get flexibility that way.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

David Ashcraft — And there’s certain times, usually Mondays and Tuesdays, everybody needs to be in for team meetings. After that, we, you know, once we know that you can manage your time well, then we’ll give you lots of flexibility.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

David Ashcraft — And so I think that’s but something that permeates through the whole staff. And then, now, as we’ve gotten bigger, then we have lots of opportunities to help staff in a variety of ways so that they stay strong in their marriage, stay strong in their relationship with Christ.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Love that. Okay, pivoting to your current ah your current role, talking a little bit more about Global Leadership Network. When you talked about cassette tapes, that took me back. I, early on in my ministry, I was a monthly subscriber to the Global Leadership Network tapes, and those tapes would come in, and and literally, I can say, they were like this encouragement, that I I I still think of like talks…

David Ashcraft — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …from 30 years ago that that still impact me. And then I remember the first time I had, like thousands of leaders, I had an experience in the Lakeside Auditorium where I just came on a weekend. It was not and it wasn’t a conference, and it was a transformative experience for me where I I literally the experience I had was, oh church doesn’t have to suck. Like I I, and I was working in a church at that that that point. Like it it was ah and and GLN has had has influenced so many people has had, you know, it’s ah has it had monster influence, done incredible work for years.

Rich Birch — But let’s talk a little bit about it. What’s kind of bring bring us up to speed on what’s going on with the summit? What’s kind of the most recent things? You know, what are your aspirations for the Global Leadership Summit? There’s a lot there. But but what what do we think of these days when you think about Global Leadership Network?

David Ashcraft — Yeah. So Rich, yeah, like you, it has had a huge impact on my life. I think I’ve only missed one in 31 years. And so, like you, I would listen to cassette tapes, especially early mid nineties. And so whether it was Bill Hybels or whether it was John Maxwell and my kids, my family would complain whenever we’d go on vacation because we’d get in the car and I had all these cassettes we were going to listen to. And so they always say, oh man, does John have to come with us again on vacation? And so they grew up on that, but real impactful for me.

David Ashcraft — And um there’s been a couple of hard years at the summit after just leadership situations, 2018, COVID, was hard on the summit. And so when I stepped in, there were a couple of things we wanted to correct. We just wanted to get back in balance with our vision, mission, and then just get us sound again financially.

David Ashcraft — And our mission, our vision is really to be a tool for pastors. And when I say that, it’s not meant to be a pastor’s conference, but it’s meant to be a tool so that a pastor can come in, he can get better, she can get better as a leader, but so that they can lead their church and leaders in their church to thrive as a church, so ultimately more people can come to know Jesus.

David Ashcraft — And so not a pastor’s conference. We bring leaders in from around the world, business leaders, nonprofit leaders, educators, things like that, church leaders as well. And it’s also a huge evangelistic tool for people in the community that are strong leaders, want to grow in their leadership capacity. Would never come to your church for anything else, but they come for the summit because it’s so strong.

David Ashcraft — So bottom line, we just say, we just want to be a tool to more more pastors, help your churches thrive, help them reach their community. Ultimately, so more people can come to know Jesus. And that’s, that’s the real focus. Though it’s, I would talk about about it as being more pre-evangelism where again, it just begins to soften people’s hearts towards Jesus. We don’t do altar calls. We don’t do worship. It truly is a leadership training development thing, but we love it when um leaders, CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are there, they’re speaking, and they just happen to say, I’m a follower of Jesus, just subtly in their in their comments. So it’s that kind of thing.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s it’s and obviously the centerpiece of the strategy is the summit. It’s obviously not everything that GLN does, but that’s kind of the the core of it. We’re coming into summit season. Friends that are listening in, this is like—and David didn’t ask me to do this; it’s like unabashed—you should get to the summit this year. If it’s been a couple years since you’ve been there, like go to a site close by, go join the studio audience, you know, in, in Barrington there. It really is. It’s going to be an incredible summit.

Rich Birch — When, when you would say to a church leader, they would say that this is the kind of church that’s benefiting the most from a partnership with GLN. What does that look like? Like what the people that are kind of leveraging it, if you were to have like a hundred more of these churches, you were like, man, we could change the world. What what would be some of those things that you’d say like, Hey, that that’s a church that’s really kind of on board with what we’re doing and and we’re, it’s a good partnership. What’s that look like?

David Ashcraft — Well, I’ll use LCBC as an example because we’ve hosted for over 20 years. We typically have between 2,500 and 3,000 people attend the summit at our different locations.

Rich Birch — That’s amazing.

David Ashcraft — And so, if as a church you think, oh, let’s have the summit, but you just view it as an event where somebody wants to come in and use your building to put on this event, it’ll be a flop. It’ll be a failure because it needs to become part of your, just who you are as a church. And so for us, it’s kind of the capstone of how we do leadership development at LCBC.

Rich Birch — Love it. Yep.

David Ashcraft — And it’s not going to tell you a church model and how to do church or how to do kid min. That’s not the purpose of it. You’re going to have to teach your people that. But what it’s going to do is bring leaders in that’ll speak at the summit. They’ll say, this is how to create culture. And it’s up to you to create your culture, but this is why you need to have a healthy culture. Here’s how to create a healthy culture.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

David Ashcraft — And it’s going to look different from church to church, but we’ll talk about culture. Or we’ll talk about you know why it’s important to cast vision and here’s how to cast vision. But your vision is going to be different than my vision. And so we don’t tell you how how your church ought operate. We just tell you how to be better at all those different areas that are required for a leader. So what it’s done for LCBC, we teach the basics of how we want it to happen at LCBC. The summit though, just kind of gives you this overarching, man, if every leader that’s in the church can be there, it just raises the capacity for them.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s good.

David Ashcraft — And so then everybody’s better. And what it does, you know, a speaker will talk, they’ll tell a story, they’ll tell a joke, they’ll make a point. And all of our leaders are there. And so then all I have to do as the leader of the church is just, man, remember when so-and-so said this and everybody’s got it. And it just seems to just catalyze and move you forward faster.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

David Ashcraft — So huge from that standpoint.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. And, you know if you just go to globalleadership.org, you can see, ah like, you know, obviously, it’s too late to host this year, I think, it’s still too late to host, but you could get a group of leaders together and say, hey, let’s go to what let’s go to there’s, there will for sure be a church that’s within a reasonable driving distance of you to go and, ah you know, to go be a part of it.

Rich Birch — And I love that. I think the common language thing is a massive deal. I know over the years, it’s been really helpful to have like the same people in the room to be like, hey, when, you know, Craig Groeschel talked about that thing, or, you know, Christine Cain there this year, or John Maxwell, John Acuff. You know, any any of the folks that are there this year, incredible leaders, ah David Ashcraft, when he spoke, you know, ah yeah all of that to then link back to that and say, okay, let’s talk about what difference that makes at our church, man, what a gift that is. And it’s so incredibly inexpensive.

Rich Birch — I’ve always thought that about the GLN stuff. I’m like, I can’t believe we’re getting this. Like if this was a normal business conference, it would be 10X what the cost is. And so…

David Ashcraft — Oh yeah.

Rich Birch — …it’s it’s incredible. So I just want to honor you for that. I think it’s a great, great thing. Is there a particular speaker this year you’re you’re looking forward to? Anything, you know, kind of a highlight this year or something behind the scenes we can be we should be looking forward to?

David Ashcraft — Yeah. And I’ll just comment on the price real quick. It is incredibly inexpensive. And so oftentimes the board will say we need to raise our prices, need to raise our prices. But one of the things in our in our bylaws is we want to make it accessible to as many people as possible in the local church.

Rich Birch — Okay, that makes sense.

David Ashcraft — There’s actually another organization that pretty much waits each year for us to announce our speakers. Then they get the same speakers, but they charge $4- or $5,000 a person…

Rich Birch — Yeah.

David Ashcraft — …where we charge $150, $170 a person…

Rich Birch — Yes.

David Ashcraft — …and they sell their [inaudible] out.

Rich Birch — Yes.

David Ashcraft — So we could charge more, but that’s not our goal. So yeah.

Rich Birch — Yes.

David Ashcraft — As far as speakers, we’ve got great speakers. And one the things that’s fun at the summit, we’ll have people that are well known in different environments, but then we’ll also have people that are kind of unheard of yet at this point…

Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.

David Ashcraft — …but they’ve got great, great content, great experience. So we’ve got several of those that would be new or unheard of. But we so one of the real fun ones, we try to have somebody that’s just kind of a fun but great leader. And so Nick Saban, the Alabama coach, will be that speaker this year, which I think is going to be incredibly exciting.

David Ashcraft — We’re going to recognize John Maxwell. We do last several years, a what we call a legacy leader and and just thank them for, honor them for the difference they’ve made.

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s great.

David Ashcraft — And so John’s going to be honored that way this year. So yeah, we’ve got a great lineup. It’s it’s going to be real good and excited about it.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

David Ashcraft — And you mentioned different sites. We’re actually at about 450 sites the United States.

Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.

David Ashcraft — And then around the world, another 700 more. So about 350,000 people take part in the summit around the world.

Rich Birch — That’s amazing.

David Ashcraft — And so, yeah, it’s just really exciting to see.

Rich Birch — This has got to be one of the largest of this type of event, right? Like I don’t know anything else that runs that size. That’s um that’s incredible.

David Ashcraft — It is. And especially to do it for 30 years now…

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.

David Ashcraft — …is also not the norm. So, yeah.

Rich Birch — No, that’s amazing. Well, that’s, that’s great. So friends, again, I would strongly encourage you to go over, go over to globalleadership.org. You can see all the local sites. You can, they’re, you know, still announcing some speakers. You’ll see there’s lots of information there. Again, I wouldn’t do it by yourself. Don’t just go you and and one person like, pack the car out, get a van, go with 10 or 15 people. That will exponentially make it more valuable to you as a leader as in what you’re doing. The more people you have around you doing this, ah it will help you as you lead at your you know at your organization. Well, just as we as we come to land, any kind of final words you’d have for us today, David?

David Ashcraft — No, I just, you know, one of the things that changed for me probably seven or eight years ago was coming across a passage in the book of Acts about Apollos. And Apollos, it describes in very glowing terms. And so as I’m reading that, I’m thinking, I’m nothing like Apollos. And was almost discouraged. But then there’s just one little phrase that was at the bottom of a passage I’m sure I’ve read many times before. It just said he was a great benefit or advantage to every believer that he came in contact with. And reading that, I thought, okay, I can do that. I can be a benefit. I can be advantage. And specifically, I said, I want to be an advantage or a benefit to pastors.

David Ashcraft — And so just kind of at that point said, that’s what I want to do the rest of my life. And so um doing that here in Pennsylvania, we work with the largest churches in Pennsylvania, but also with a GLN and just a real natural tie in to say, whatever I can do, we can do to help pastors thrive and their churches thrive. Then that’s a win and more people come to know Jesus. And so I just encourage each person listening, whatever their role, whatever capacity they can be as well a benefit or an advantage to others. And so I hope that’s really their focus as they step away from this.

Rich Birch — That’s great. Well, thank you, David. Thanks for your leadership. And, you know, I’m cheering for the GLN, cheering for your leadership there. Thanks for for leading and thanks for being on the show today.

David Ashcraft — Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. Good to talk to you, Rich.

Let’s face it: talking finances can be uncomfortable, but it’s a critical conversation, especially in multisite ministry. Today, I’m tackling one of the toughest—and most essential—questions in multisite: How do we fund, sustain, and scale financially healthy campuses?

Throughout our All About Multisite series, I’m providing practical answers every Wednesday and hosting insightful interviews with leaders from thriving multisite churches on Thursdays. Now, let’s dive into the details of multisite financial strategies to help you avoid costly pitfalls.

Don’t let finances stop your multisite vision. Equip your church for sustainable growth, keeping your ministry thriving long-term.

Additional Resources:

Thanks for joining us at the unSeminary podcast. In this All About Multisite month podcast episode we’re talking with Omar Giritli, Lead Pastor, and Carlos Cardenas, Executive Pastor at Christ Fellowship. With campuses spread across Miami, the Caribbean and South America, Christ Fellowship has truly become a model of how to lead a diverse, multi-generational church with a powerful mission.

What does it take to lead a multisite church with a global reach? Tune in as Omar and Carlos share how they’ve developed a robust leadership pipeline, fostered a culture of empowerment, and navigated the unique challenges of international church planting.

You can learn more about Christ Fellowship at www.cfmiami.org and follow them on social media @cfmiami. For local outreach updates, check out @caringformiami.

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 that you’ve decided to tune in during this All About Multisite month. We’re having conversations, getting behind the scenes with some prevailing multisite churches. And to be honest, I’ve been looking forward to this conversation for a long time.

Rich Birch — Excited to have a couple of leaders from Christ Fellowship. This church was founded in 1917 to impact Miami by helping people and their families follow Jesus. Today, Christ Fellowship really is a model church, a church you should be following, multi-generational, multicultural, international church with multiple locations. I can’t keep track in Miami, the Caribbean, Latin America, and online. We’ll get to how many later. Excited to have Omar Giritli with us, ah lead pastor, and Carlos Cardenas, the executive pastor and leads the directional leadership team. Welcome, guys. So glad you’re here.

Omar Giritli — Hey, glad we’re here.

Carlos Cardenas —  It’s good to be here. Yeah.

Omar Giritli — Absolutely.

Rich Birch — This this is going to be good. Why don’t we start with kind of filling out the picture a little bit. Omar, kind of fill out tell fill out the kind of the picture. Give us a bit more kind of on the bones of that description that I gave there.

Omar Giritli — Yeah, you know, we we are a church here in Miami that really even started before 1917. We’re the oldest church in Miami. In fact, our downtown campus opened a day before the city of Miami was incorporated.

Rich Birch — Wow!

Omar Giritli — And so we have a long, rich history here in Miami. Our downtown campus, back in the day, you know, sent sent off the the Palmetto Bay campus back in 1917. And ah that grew, God you know really showed a lot of grace to our to our church here in the Palmetto Bay area. And from there on out, we kept growing. The downtown campus, which was Central Baptist Church, became us, or like our sending church, merged with us. And so now we have five campuses all throughout Miami-Dade County in the different key regions in Miami. And then we also have ah campuses all throughout kind of Latin America, the Caribbean, and South America.

Rich Birch — Wow. Well, we’re definitely going to get to that ah today.

Rich Birch — Carlos, why don’t you tell us little bit about your story? How did you get connected to the church? You know, oftentimes the the great thing about, people understand what lead pastors do and they talk about executive pastors. It looks different in every church. Give us a bit of a profile. Talk to us a little bit about where you spend your time.

Carlos Cardenas — Yeah, absolutely. Well, it’s good to to be here with you, Rich. And I actually have been on staff for 15 years already. And when I transitioned, when I came to Christ Fellowship for the first time, I actually started as a volunteer. I was a volunteer, worship ah member. I was, well, still played music, but I was a musician, played a keyboard, was part of band directing and things like that. And so I started as a volunteer and I became an intern for just a couple months, like three months. But right when I became an intern, a couple months later, I was was I was given the opportunity to come on staff as a worship director at one of our campuses.

Carlos Cardenas — That being said, throughout the years, you know, with other previous leaders, you know, I’ve been able to be developed as a leader, you know, and growing my leadership, growing my not only knowledge of God’s word, but knowledge of, you know, ministry life and and all that. And so I’ve had several positions here, from being a campus pastor, to eventually, you know, being the pastor of campuses. And then um became officially ah an executive pastor, you know, our, our lead pastor, Pastor Omar, he became the lead pastor in 2019. And a couple years after that, you know, um, the previous executive pastor was only here for a season. It was just a transitional thing and I would become a successor. So officially I became an executive pastor of Christ Fellowship about two and a half years ago.

Carlos Cardenas — So it’s been ah a fun ride. I mean, you know, I’ve learned a lot. I’ve made a a lot of mistakes and but but it’s been interesting and it’s just been a great experience to to learn the ins and outs of multisite, of ministry, of being in a city like Miami. You know, ah there’s there’s challenges that we have that other churches, other cities, you know, you may not come across these challenges. So, but it’s been ah it’s been an interesting and a good, really good experience, healthy experience overall.

Rich Birch — Love it. that’s That’s so good.

Rich Birch — Omar, you were talking earlier that you started as a part-time role at the church as well. To give us a little bit about your history, because this is, I think, super you know fascinating. Here’s two leaders leading at a senior level in a really influential growing church. Talks about how your journey from where you started to the role of lead pastor.

Omar Giritli — Right. So, you know I was you know, I was going to the University of Miami. I went to I was going to be an attorney, actually. And so, you know, I got i was going to be an accountant and then I and then went to law school. And between my first and second year of law school, I felt like God called me to the ministry.

Omar Giritli — So I decided, felt like God called me to ministry, but I decided just to finish off law school. And so after law school, instead of going to the law profession, I literally went to I started working at Christ Fellowship.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Omar Giritli — And I started working as an intern um during law school. I was not an intern at a law office. I was an intern at church. And and when once I graduated, ah by the grace of God, there was an opening here at CF, and it was a very entry level you know, position in small groups ministry. I was an intern in the student ministry. Then I came into in the small groups.

Omar Giritli — And then from there on out, kind of my journey is very kind of very similar to Carlos. I was a ah small group associate. I became the small group director, small group pastor. Then it became, then I transitioned to a campus pastor later on. Then I became the director of campuses. And then after that, there was a season where I kind of was doing executive pastor role without the official title. But then eventually, ah yeah, then eventually I just transitioned into the lead pastor when our former lead pastor, Pastor Rick Blackwood, transition retired.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Omar Giritli — But we both had a very similar similar journey.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that I love that. And that speaks to, we were joking about this ahead of time, your reputation as a church is you have like a great robust leadership culture. And, you know, have done a great job but um kind of helping people develop and helping, you know, your people develop people.

Rich Birch — Carlos, talk to us a little bit about maybe at a staff level, at when you’re encouraging your staff to develop. I think this is one of these things that all of our churches, we say we want to do, but it’s actually very hard to operationalize. What does the developing of particularly volunteers look like for the team at CF?

Carlos Cardenas — Yeah, absolutely. We we definitely try to create ah and cultivate a dynamic and an environment where there’s a lot of leadership development that takes place. Not only do we encourage that, we it’s part of our goals. So every year at our church, we, our staff, we have about four to five, sometimes six, you know, goals that we want to accomplish. And one of them always has to do with leadership development.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Carlos Cardenas — So, you know, you have your attendance, you have like small groups, you have volunteers, which is great, right? But one of them always has to do with developing a leader. And so, and so it is it is the norm here to to empower volunteers, to empower other staff members to do some of the some of the responsibilities that you’ve been entrusted with.

Carlos Cardenas — And one ah jokingly, I always tell people, listen, ah we don’t want Superman leadership here. Like, we don’t want you to be a Superman and do it all, right? Like, you’re the one that’s going save the world, and you’re the one that’s going to save the day, and you’re the one that’s going to know all the answers. No, we want to be able to delegate and empower as much as possible.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Carlos Cardenas — You know, if you, you know, I heard Andy Stanley many, many years ago share, if you, you know, delegate tasks, you’re just going to create followers. But if you delegate authority, you’re going to create leaders. You’re going to develop leaders. And so that is very, you know, as part of our culture, you know, something that we talk about often. And and we’ve actually throughout the, so, a lot of the leadership of development, ah some of it happens sort of organically, right? Because it’s the culture and you’re bringing alongside alongside someone with you. You know, when you go into a meeting, you’re, you know, you bring someone just to be a fly on the wall so they can hear how the dynamics of that meeting goes. You know, people that you entrust, right? Second Timothy 2.2, you know, entrust into reliable men who will entrust into others, you know, entrust into people that you’re going to, you trust and are are competent and have the character.

Carlos Cardenas — But throughout the years, ah several years ago, we actually formalized our leadership development process and we call it Level Up. So it’s like you’re leveling up someone ah to take on more leadership and possibly even taking on your position.

Rich Birch — Oh wow.

Carlos Cardenas — And so I know at times people can become insecure because they’re like, oh, my gosh, is this competition?

Carlos Cardenas — You know, I’m leveling up this person and then they’re no longer going need me. But vice versa. We we actually ah reward those who have leveled up someone to take on their position because if you level up someone to take on your position or another one, you’re you’re always going to have a job or a seat in the bus, right?

Rich Birch — 100%. 100%.

Carlos Cardenas — Because you’re just helping you know God’s mission move forward.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Carlos Cardenas — And one of the things that will will will be a hindrance to the mission that God has given us as a church is lack of leaders.

Omar Giritli — Yeah.

Carlos Cardenas — You know if you don’t have, you you can have the the resources. You can have the venue. You can have the finances. You know you can have even like the volunteers. But if if you if the Lord provides a campus for us, right? And we don’t have the right campus pastor or the the right person to lead that campus, then guess what? It’s it’s going to create a a lid or it’s going to create a barrier into what we want to do in the future.

Carlos Cardenas — And so not not only do we encourage it, Rich, but we we make it part of our goals to to you know that you are required to develop someone or develop leaders.

Rich Birch — That’s good. We’ll come we’ll come back. I’d love to talk about Level Up, kind of the formal program, what does that look like in a minute.

Carlos Cardenas — Sure. Sure.

Rich Birch — But Omar, let’s talk about the culture side a little bit first.

Rich Birch — How do we develop, before we just jump to a program, how do we develop a culture? How have you been seeing the culture encourage at CF around leadership development? It’s that nuance. It’s that caught versus taught thing, right? Somebody can get up and say, hey, we got to develop leaders, but it’s a whole different thing when it becomes a part of who we are. What does that look like? How have you been able to develop that culture, Omar, at the church?

Omar Giritli — You know, I I think just to like what Carl’s saying, I think, you know, you know we I think part of it is that, you know, we have a a system in place. And I think part of it is, is the the the the, when our staff looks up to the leadership of the church, not only Carlos and I, but even like our directional leadership team and our campus pastors, I can’t even think of one person we brought in from the outside.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Omar Giritli — So what happens is, is anybody that’s in our staff and looks up in the organization, they, you know, they, they can, you know, you know, they can see, wow, if I stick around it long enough, if I’m faithful, if I work hard, if I’m a man of a woman of integrity…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Omar Giritli — …if if I do what is asked of me and I’m faithful, what Ii have to do, there’s always opportunity for me here at Christ Fellowship. I, you know, I’m not a big fan of bringing people from the outside.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Omar Giritli — And really, the few times that we’ve done it, it’s very expensive, and they don’t last.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Omar Giritli — Good people, they just, they just don’t last. I mean, it’s they they’re here for two or three years, and they go. And whether, you know, Miami is very different. Miami is very Hispanic. I mean, little you know, you cross a Broward line, which is a county above, you know, Miami-Dade. And it’s it’s it’s a very unique place. It’s it’s it’s a very unique place. There’s a lot of, you know, Hispanics. It’s a melting pot of South America. And so there’s a lot of things going on here that, honestly, it’s not it’s not for everybody.

Omar Giritli — And so um so usually people just come and they’re here for just a few years and it’s not even us. It’s sometimes the cost of living, and the people, and you know the i just they just rather go somewhere else. But the people that stick around for long-term are all people who’ve been here 10, 15 years.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Omar Giritli — I think, if you think about it, like between Carlos and I, we’ve been here both over 15 years. The directional leadership team, every single person has been from 35 years to somebody else is probably like, all of them are over 10 years in directional leadership team here within CF.

Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.

Omar Giritli — The campus pastors, for the most part, have been here easily six, seven to 10 years. So what happens is you start looking up the organization and at any young intern, any young staff member entry level position, they see you know, we can talk a lot about leadership development and we can talk about, hey, but where the proof, you know, where the proof, you know, the proof is in the pudding, right?

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Omar Giritli — Look up and everybody here are people that have been here for a long time. So I think that in itself screams, you know, you know, you know screams, um says a lot more than anything we could ever say.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Omar Giritli — And I think people recognize that. And I think um the people that ah that are in our staff are here. And the truth of the matter is you want people that you raise up because not only are they they, they, you know, you know, you, they know, you you know who they are. You know that they love the Lord. They understand how we operate as a church. They understand our history of our church. But the reality is that they also love our church. There’s a deep passion not and love, not only for the Lord, but for our church, our church family.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Omar Giritli — And so I think that’s, you know, you know you can have all you can have all the leadership development pipelines and strategies in your in your church. But if the top people are not longstanding people that have developed through the ranks, it’s it’s kind of like you’re you’re you’re preaching something, but it it’s doesn’t really come to fruition, you know?

Rich Birch — Right.

Carlos Cardenas — You’re not you’re not modeling you’re not modeling we’re not you don’t not be modeling what you’re preaching what you’re what you’re you know vision casting for.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s a good insight. You know, and and there’s no doubt, you know, Miami obviously is a unique place, but every part of the country tells the same story, which is like, hey, this part of the country is just different for one reason or another.

Omar Giritli — Sure. Right.

Rich Birch — And it’s everybody’s convinced that they’re, but you know, that is obviously true in Miami. And you can see that where, you know, and we I think we get tempted by the cross country hire. We get tempted by the like, oh, here’s a person that was in a similar church and like we can just transplant them into here and like they’ll, but that it really is, it’s the rare person. And I did that. I made the 12 hour move and thought I was going to live there forever. And eight, nine years later, we moved back. I didn’t even think that was going to happen, but there it is.

Rich Birch —Carlos, tell us, talk…

Carlos Cardenas — And I think, and just to add to what Omar said about it, if you don’t mind if I can just add to what Omar said, because I completely agree with that.

Rich Birch —Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Carlos Cardenas — I think when you don’t when the culture is not healthy and it and it it’s in a specific ministry, then you may need to hire from the outside…

Rich Birch — Sure.

Carlos Cardenas — …like someone that may need to fix you know the ministry or fix whatever area department because the culture is toxic and and all that. But by the grace of God, we we’ve tried as much as we can within the last four to five years, especially when Omar became the lead pastor, to, to make sure the culture is healthy.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.

Carlos Cardenas — Like we work hard at trying to, you know, you know, reward people, you know, care for them, celebrate them, and encourage them.

Omar Giritli — Yeah.

Carlos Cardenas — And I think one of the biggest mistakes that people but fail in ministry is that they don’t want to let go of responsibility. They don’t want to like, and we are all about like, man, releasing, here’s an opportunity for you. You’re young, whether intern or yeah or a volunteer. I mean, we have volunteer staff that that and we hold accountable to.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.

Carlos Cardenas — Like they we hold them accountable. They go to staff meetings and they’re volunteers.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Carlos Cardenas — Lay men, lay women, you know, that love our church. But, you know, the the I think Omar brought up an excellent point. The high-performing leader stud from across the country, they know a lot, but they they don’t have that love for for the church…

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Carlos Cardenas — …like like like like someone else who may not be, you know, a five-star, you know, leader, but they they’ll get there. They’ll get there, you know? So, yeah.

Rich Birch — Right. Well, yeah and I’ve, so I’ve said in other contexts, like what we do is not rocket science. Like I think sometimes we make it more complex than it is. But the culture stuff—and I love that both of you have hit on this—the love for the church, man, you can’t replace that.

Carlos Cardenas — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Like the, the, the heart, the heart for the house, man, we love this place.

Omar Giritli — Yeah.

Rich Birch — You know, God’s changed my life here. I want to be a part of that. That’s a very good, that’s a very good insight.

Rich Birch — Omar, pivoting in a totally different direction. As an outsider, Miami seems to be the capital city of Latin America, and your church has is in is taking that mission on very seriously. You’ve done the international campus thing. I’d love to hear more about that, just to put ah in a little bit context for our listeners. The vast majority of multisite churches are, in fact, less than 1% are more than an hour away from the original location. So the fact that you’re doing international campuses, very rare. It just doesn’t, statistically just doesn’t happen.

Rich Birch — But I’d love to hear the story of that, Omar. How did you get into that? What’s the vision behind that? Tell us a little bit of that story.

Omar Giritli — Yeah. So what happened was when I stepped into this role of lead pastor, one of the things that, and and it was a little bit also when I was doing the kind of the XP role, you know, I was noticing that we would send a lot of money to our, to different mission organizations. And what I noticed was we’re sending a lot of money, and I had no clue what they were doing with that money.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Omar Giritli — I mean, it was so much money. Yeah. Mission, mission, mission, but okay. Where’s the report?

Rich Birch — Right.

Omar Giritli — Where’s, help us understand how do we know what how you handle that money? You know, and again, it’s not I don’t think anybody was you know doing anything fraudulent, but there wasn’t any any real, you know, you know, what was the fruit of that? What was the fruit of all of our sacrifice to give to this mission organization, you know?

Omar Giritli — And so at some point we we we started we we have like ah we’re supporting some churches in Cuba. And at that juncture, we went to go see them and um the previous um executive pastor before Carlos, ah his name is Jim Tomberlin, you probably know who he is.

Omar Giritli — You know, I started thinking myself, why we start funneling all of our missions budget, not just to some random mission organizations that we have no clue how they’re using the money and how effective they’re using that money. But what about if we just plant our own churches? How what about we establish our own churches?

Omar Giritli — And these will be churches that have our same mission, vision, strategy. Our same name. Some places would have Christ Fellowship in some Latin American countries where there’s English speaking people. If not, they’re called Familia Cristiana, which is a very similar name with the same low, same thing. And they will be independent churches. They’re not ours, but they’re independent churches that ah we support the pastor. We provide resources, graphics, a sermon. I mean, anything that they they need. And how come, you know, what about we did this?

Omar Giritli — So we what we started doing is instead of giving all this money just to some, you know, random mission organization that we don’t know how effective they were being. We know that when we establish, when we plant our church ourselves, we know how to do it. We know that’s going to be effective. And we know that we can, with integrity, I could stand before the congregation and everything that you sacrifice and you gave towards this church, we know what every penny went to. And we, and here’s the proof. These are churches you have started or helped revitalize.

Omar Giritli — And it’s been awesome. It’s been awesome because they they, lot of these churches, we plant them and with the strategy, hey, we want to get you off the ground. And you’re free to go. You’re you’re like you’re you’re literally free to go and become your own church if you want to. But most of them just stay with us.

Rich Birch — Right.

Omar Giritli — They just want to just stay with us really.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Omar Giritli — And they have a great, great partnership. And it’s been really a really great, a really great thing for us where, you know, we’re able to establish all these churches in all these different places and, and we’re learning and we don’t have it perfected. But if you look at any of these other campuses globally, they’re going through the same series we are.

Carlos Cardenas — Yeah.

Omar Giritli — Same graphics, same, you know, sermon, you know, same teaching. I mean, It’s kind of funny. Some people have said that they go to these global campuses and they look more Christ Fellowship than some of our local campuses. I mean, they have really taken the identity, our strategy, our logos, pictures, and they’ve own it. They’ve taken ownership of.

Omar Giritli — And I think with those churches, when they realize, well, we’re being led by by a church who is not trying to you know be over-controlling, but we’re here, we’re together in this, right? We’re together we’re and we’re and, man, they really appreciate it. So, so yeah, so we have um campuses. I believe we have nine campuses right now um all over.

Omar Giritli — We’ve there’s been times that we’ve had 15, 16. There was a moment, for example, in Cuba where we came to a point, we had about six, seven campuses in Cuba that they said, you know, with the political tensions, better if we completely go independent because of everything going on.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Sure.

Omar Giritli — And so they they went off and they’re still doing great and we love them. They love us. But, you know, that’s, you know, our goal is not having a Christ Fellowship campuses. It’s really establishing and and planting new churches where there are no churches, you know.

Rich Birch — Right.

Omar Giritli — It’s been great. And I think our people are really appreciate it. Because they really feel that when they give their tithe and their offerings and they sacrifice to give to Christ Fellowship, that we’re really funneling that to to to to further the gospel to all nations.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing.

Carlos Cardenas — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Could, Carlos, unpack that a little bit. When you say that you guys have planted, what does that typically look like? Like, are you identifying planters in the communities that you’re, you know, that you’re launching in? Talk us through some of the, how does some of the mechanics of that work?

Carlos Cardenas — Yes, some of them have been a—great question—some of them have been a church merger, you know, so it’s a church, a church that is, you know, a dying church. And then we’ve so we have a global pastor, you know, and our global pastor is the one who is ah but building these relationships with these men or these pastors, right? And and in those countries. And so then some of them have been of church merger.

Carlos Cardenas — Others have started just like we would start a local campus where they start with small groups. You know, we first of all, I identify the leader. So we have the pastor. Then that pastor, I can tell you one campus in Colombia, Villavicencio, this was the their their their pathway. Actually for several of them, on Honduras as well and Guatemala, where they begin ah small groups, right? In someone’s home.

Carlos Cardenas — And then they start having multiple small groups. And then they identify a venue. So usually they they lease space, you know. We do help them financially in that in that process. And then from there, we have our our grand our our our launch date, like our grand opening. For the most part, either Omar, myself, will be a part of that. We’ve even done ordinations and in in in some of these pastors.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Carlos Cardenas — We’ve gone there to do ordinations, like do the whole ordination process and the the ceremony. So it usually starts with identifying the pastor, starting off with small groups, investing and serving the community. And then we have our grand opening launch, launch date in, in, in, in that, in that community, in that city of of of the country that we we go to.

Carlos Cardenas — And just to, to really just to kind of add to what Omar shared, you know, there, if you were to go to one of those campuses, it feels like you’re at Christ Fellowship Miami. Like in in the context of that nation, it’s like, oh, like same graphic branding, um you know, even the vibe like guest services.

Carlos Cardenas — Because the other thing too, is that our ministry directors here, they spend some time ah developing their leaders there. So for example, Like our creative director will have a Zoom meeting with all the creative leads from all the different global campuses. So you will have like 15 people from all over the country, from all and over the world, right? From all over really South America, and Latin America and the Caribbean. So you have someone from several people from, you know, um Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Colombia, you know, Honduras.

Carlos Cardenas — And, and, and we’ll, you know, they’ll still have like a a workshop, you know, on hey here’s, here’s some of the best, you know, common practices when it comes to, you know, graphics and when it comes to, you know, ah videos on social media, think things like that. Right?

Carlos Cardenas — And then um not last year, but in 2023, we were going to do it this year, but we had to we we we we pivoted and we’re not gonna do it this year. But in 2023, we had our our first global conference…

Rich Birch — Wow.

Carlos Cardenas — …where we had about 200 volunteers. Some were staff, but most of them were volunteers from all these global campuses. And we did a full-on conference for them. So we took about 25 staff members, including myself, you know. That included the band. So we took like the bands, you know.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Carlos Cardenas — We did a full on, you know, main session, like I was able to preach in one of the main sessions. And then we have breakouts, you know, like, it was ah it was I think it was a day and a half. No, sorry, it was a it was a full day of a conference. And then we visited many of the locations that we we had in that in that country that we went to.

Carlos Cardenas — So um we not only do we want to provide financial support, like, you know, to Omar’s point, you You know, one thing is to write a check. Another thing is to, like, we’re going to invest in your leadership. We’re going to invest in you as ah as a as a leader, as a volunteer, as a person, as ah as a congregation, as a campus. We’re we’re going to invest in you. We’re going to walk alongside you and…

Rich Birch — I love that. Yeah, I love that.

Carlos Cardenas — …and tell you, you know, here’s how we do follow-up. Here’s how we do small groups. So we’re one church. You know, it’s it’s just a it’s we call it global campuses.

Omar Giritli — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Carlos Cardenas — And and every year, at least once a year, we bring our global pastors together. We have them on stage. They share, you know, we have a video. They share something. We cast vision. We remind, you know, God’s people like, hey, part of your giving, part of your generosity…

Rich Birch — Yeah, it goes to this.

Carlos Cardenas — …you know, goes to fund these ministries and these campuses that we have in all these different countries. So it’s it’s it’s been very fascinating. Pretty cool experience.

Rich Birch — Yeah, when sticking with you, Carlos, ah there may be churches who have had, you know, maybe interest from ah pastors in a different part of the world, or, you know, they might have people that are tracking with them. What would be like ah a pothole, like a thing that you would suggest, hey, watch out for this, because this part of it is the way that it could you know go bad or not go great. Is there something in that maybe you haven’t necessarily directly experienced that, but you could see, oh, hey, this could go bad if we don’t navigate this well in these kinds of relationships.

Carlos Cardenas — It always starts with the leader, with the pastor.

Rich Birch — Okay, good.

Carlos Cardenas — And and I think of it the same way with local campuses.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Carlos Cardenas — To me, the pastor is everything.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Carlos Cardenas — We call them campus pastors, global campus pastor. If the global campus pastor is not excited, fully on board, doesn’t believe in the vision, mission, and strategy. We’ve had different meetings where we’ve identified pastors and they, let’s be honest, like they they want to go into in a relationship with us. They want to get some funding…

Rich Birch — Right. Sure.

Carlos Cardenas — …but we know that their heart is not there. Like they don’t want, they, they, they don’t want to, ah ah you know, and, and contextually we, there’s, there’s certain things that we are, are flexible on, right? Like contextually, you got to tweak couple of things, right?

Rich Birch — Sure. Sure. Yep.

Carlos Cardenas — Because you you can’t be so boxed in and and we’re not in the States, right? So you have to, you have to also be contextual to the nation that you’re in. But but for the most part, you’ve got to have, you’ve got to adopt our discipleship pathway.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Carlos Cardenas — You know, our strategy, which is, you know, connecting to God, connect connect to God, connect to others, connect to ministry and connect to the mission. You know, and you have to, you know, doctrine is important, of course. And and understand, like, we’re we’re we’re aligned when it comes to our teaching, right?

Carlos Cardenas — Now, are there are there certain weekends that the pastor may have a one-off? Like, you know, it may not do the the not be a part of the sermon series. That’s okay. We we we we have to navigate those tensions, right?
Rich Birch — Sure.

Carlos Cardenas — But for the most part, they’re they’re aligned with us.
So you you got you got to identify the right person.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Carlos Cardenas — It always starts with them.

Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s so good. Well, just as we’re coming to land, Omar, as you think about the future, you think about the future of Christ Fellowship and you know campuses, multisite, what what’s on the horizon? Or maybe what are some questions you’re asking as you think about the future as ah you know as a church, as related to this, all the stuff we’ve been talking about today?

Omar Giritli — Well, as we look to the future, um you know, I think one of the things that we want to continue just to increase is, um you know, when it comes to here at Christ Fellowship, it’s really our local outreach. Because, know, we’ve been talking about our global outreach, our local outreach here at Christ Fellowship.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Omar Giritli — And one of the things that um that that really that we’re really just proud of as as ah as an organization ah is that we have two missional arms of Christ Fellowship. One of them is to families, which is Christ Fellowship Academy. We we have a school.

Rich Birch — Very cool.

Omar Giritli — But we also have Caring for Miami, ah which is ah really a nonprofit that really focuses on reaching the under-resourced and hurting in our city.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Omar Giritli — And, man, we have it’s an amazing thing where ah we have a, Caring for Miami does, you know, different things. For example, we have a more a brand new state-of-the-art mobile market that goes through all the hurting parts of the city and people…

Rich Birch — Wow.

Omar Giritli — …you know, the the Miami-Dade down the the county down donated one of their their buses and we gutted it and we renovated it to be a state-of-the-art market that they goes through all these different hurting parts of the city.

Rich Birch — That’s cool.

Omar Giritli — And people could go on there shop free of charge. We have a mobile dental clinic that goes to all these different parts and provides free resources, free services to cancer patients, to all these hurting people.

Omar Giritli — We have our, we’re just about to launch our mobile clothing market, which is a bus that actually goes to all the same places and people go on there and shop for, and not shop, but pick the clothes they want ah free of charge and and and all that.

Omar Giritli — We have a park marketplace. We have a backpack program which gives to children in schools. And so one of the things is that, you know, we need to continue reaching out, you know, being very missional.

Omar Giritli — One of the things that, you know, Carlos and I were talking about that part of our our giving has really increased in the last several years. And I think it’s not because we’ve done a great a huge sermon series on giving. We do talk about it you know regularly, and we’re not you know we’re not afraid to talk about giving.

Omar Giritli — We’re giving as examples. We’re taught to be good stewards of what God has given to us. But I really do think that when the people of God see the church being missional, whether it’s locally…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Omar Giritli — …for example, through Caring for Miami, or globally, really it’s, I think it really motivates people to want to really sacrifice and give towards a mission because they see that what they’re sacrificing for is not just to keep the lights open, but it’s to really reach more people for Christ, not only here in Miami, but abroad.

Omar Giritli — And so that’s one of the things that we do. We really want to celebrate what a God is doing through us and locally and and globally. And whether you know we’re you know ministering to a cancer patient through our dental clinic or whether we are planning a new church and do an outreach you know in you know in Costa Rica, they know that, hey, when you give to this church, we might not be perfect, but man, we’re going to be our best, do our best to be the best stewards of what God has entrusted to us through the generosity of God’s people, and and do that. So that’s one of the things that we’re that we’re looking to do as we move forward is continue just to be as missional as possible.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Omar Giritli — And and I think our people really buy into that. And they they really their hearts are really behind that because you know we all want to see people reach reach people you know. We all want to see people being reached for Christ, right so.

Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely.

Omar Giritli — That’s one of the things, you continue to be missional and and and develop leaders because as as people give, as we’re missional, as people give, more opportunities come up, which is that we need to be have the leaders ready to go, you know…

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good.

Omar Giritli — …which kind of ties into the inner circle of like leadership development.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Well, I really appreciate you guys being on today and thank you for letting us look under the hood a little bit. Carlos, if people want to track with the church, where do we want to send them online? Where where should we get to send them to stay connected with what you guys are up to?

Carlos Cardenas — Yeah, our website, cfmiami.org.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Carlos Cardenas — cfmiami.org, yeah.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Omar Giritli — Yeah, and social media.

Carlos Cardenas — Follow you can follow us on social media too, Instagram, you know Facebook, @cfmiami as well. That’s our account.

Rich Birch — Nice. You’re going to say something there, Omar, as well?

Omar Giritli — Yeah, so our social media handles are CFMiami.

Omar Giritli — And then also, if you want to look more and into like our Caring for Miami, which I just mentioned, it’s just @caringformiami.

Omar Giritli — It’s on social, on, on, on, and you’ll see it’s like, it’s pretty amazing.

Rich Birch — That’s so cool.

Omar Giritli — So on our main website, you’ll see us celebrate their global campuses. And then on Caring for Miami, we’ll celebrate all that we’re doing in the community.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Rich Birch — Thanks so much, gentlemen. I appreciate you being here today. Thank you.

Omar Giritli — You got it. Thank you so much, Rich.

The multisite journey isn’t always smooth—even thriving churches experience growing pains. Today, I’m busting some of the biggest myths and offering practical insights to overcome common struggles within multisite churches.

Every week during All About Multisite month, I’m diving deep into practical solutions on Wednesdays and hosting behind-the-scenes conversations with multisite leaders on Thursdays. Today’s episode specifically tackles the tricky realities that don’t always get airtime at conferences: the tensions, structures, and struggles that come with scaling beyond a single location.

Remember, encountering challenges in multisite growth doesn’t mean you’re failing—it means you’re growing. Let’s tackle these myths head-on and keep your church moving forward.

Additional Opportunities:

Welcome back to another special All About Multisite episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re joined today by Bo Chancey (Senior Pastor) and Jeremy Peterson (Executive Pastor) from One Church, a growing multisite church based in New Hampshire. With four physical “outposts” and a thriving online presence, One Church is reaching communities across rural and suburban New England with a mission rooted in prayer, simplicity, and incarnational ministry.

Is your church considering multisite but unsure how to maintain culture and avoid personality-driven models? Wondering how to develop more leaders or foster unity across locations and teams? Tune in as Bo and Jeremy offer practical insights into developing communicators, creating alignment, and launching new outposts with prayer and purpose.

To learn more about One Church, visit them at church.one and check out their Residency Program to develop hands-on ministry experience.

Are you leading your staff with prayer… or just with plans? The Prayer-Powered Leadership Rhythm Guide is a hands-on resource designed to help you build the daily habit of praying for your entire team. Inspired by One Church’s leadership rhythms, this guide includes:

This resource is exclusively available through unSeminary Extra Credit, our affordable membership that fuels the podcast and provides you with valuable tools like this and many others!

Click here to join unSeminary Extra Credit and get instant access to this resource and more!

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

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

Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Risepointe

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

Well, the team over at Risepointe has been there. As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead your church to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Licensed all over North America, their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to help move YOUR mission forward.

Check them out at Risepointe.com/unseminary and while you’re there get their FREE resource “10 Things to Get Right Before You Build”.

Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. We’re in the middle of a great month of episodes all about multisite where we’re talking with some prevailing churches, trying to look under the hood and learn a little bit more about this incredibly important and movement that continues to impact churches across the country.

Rich Birch — I’m excited to talk with two leaders who I know are going to open up some insights that are going super helpful for you. From New Hampshire, One Church – this is a multisite church in the new Northeast ah with four outpost locations in in New Hampshire plus online. Bo Chancey is the senior pastor and Jeremy Peterson is the executive pastor. Welcome to the show. So glad you guys are here.

Bo Chancey — Thanks. Thanks for having us.

Jeremy Peterson — Thanks for having us, Rich.

Bo Chancey — Yeah, appreciate it

Rich Birch — It’s going to be, it’s excited that you guys are taking time to be with us. Bo, why don’t we start with you? Kind of tell us a little bit about One Church. If people were to come this weekend, what would they experience? Kind of set the picture for us. Help us know a little bit more about it. Fill in the painting for us.

Bo Chancey — Well, we are by every definition a church. So we love the Lord our God and love our neighbor. Those are the the two key components. And then we want to make disciples.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Bo Chancey — We want to reach as many people as fast as we can, ah the most people in the shortest time. And so that’s that’s who we are. The way that we um do that as far as a community, a local church is that we pray for one, which is very simple. It goes like this, God, please give me one person to share your love with. And so that’s what we invite everyone who is connected to One Church to participate in daily.

Bo Chancey — And that’s our primary strategy is to steward the church um and the church’s people. So lot of times when we think about church leadership and programming and stewardship, we think, um you know, programs, buildings, budgets, but really the the key thing is people. And so that’s what we’re about. We want to help people connect to God and then to people and then to the mission of Jesus.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. That’s great. Love love that. Jeremy, why don’t you fill in the picture there? Tell talk to us about the the kind of four different outposts. I love that you call them outposts. I love that language. Kind of give us a sense of the the communities that you serve. Tell us a little bit about that.

Jeremy Peterson — Yeah, so our four outposts are, um I would say two of them are located in probably two of the larger communities in New Hampshire. So all of New Hampshire, Manchester itself is about 100,000 people. Concord, where one of our outposts is, is about 50,000 people. Bedford is another community. It’s about 20,000. And then the newest one, which is in the Lakes region, it’s a community of about 7,000 people.

Jeremy Peterson — And what what we realized is we’re feeling more and more called to go to to some of these rural communities. There’s more and more churches that are dying in these rural communities. There aren’t a lot of church plants going um to these rural communities. And so really have a heartbeat um to go to some of these areas. And and we feel like that’s really what God’s called us to.

Jeremy Peterson — And and it’s really kind of shifted over the last several years where we feel a call to to to make ah a big shift from moving from from video. And so when I first came here, multisite was about to capture the message on video. We would broadcast it at the other um locations. And and we’ve made ah a shift where we really felt called to develop communicators and a lot of a lot of those time has been spent on that developing communicators. And Bo’s a phenomenal communicator, um but really developing some of those communicators that are communicating in person at the outpost on Sunday mornings. And so really pouring more and more time and into that.

Jeremy Peterson — We really feel like it allows for incarnational ministry. So whoever’s, whoever’s sharing, whoever’s preaching that week gets a chance to not only interact with people, um but actually like give somebody a hug, ah lay a hand on the shoulder as their praying over them. And we feel it felt like that’s really, really powerful, especially in this region.

Rich Birch — Yeah, love that. One of the kind of mis- common misnomers about multisite is that they’re all video. Like that’s like, it’s like, that’s the way to do it. And you guys are obviously not going in that direction, heading in a slightly different direction. Bo, unpack that a little bit from your perspective as a communicator, finding communicators, developing them, that that is a high task. You know, that’s a high calling. Why, why invest there? Why, why do you feel like that’s such an important piece of the puzzle at, at One Church?

Bo Chancey — A couple of reasons um that start with really, I think, the problems some of the problems of multisite. So there was the problem of kind of the megachurch world and the cult of personality stuff that was really troubling for me and and I know many others. That was that was something I was really struggling with.

Bo Chancey — And then the multisite model where no matter what it felt like you did, it was a satellite, no matter what. You had a mothership or a broadcast venue or whatever language you might want to use for it. There was one central location that everything else kind of orbited around. And I felt like we were losing kind of the best of what the local church in communities might have to offer.

Bo Chancey — And so a solution for that um would be to develop other communicators. And then I don’t preach at an outpost on Sunday mornings. That’s another key component. I fill in about once a month somewhere, different places, but I’m there to evaluate the communicators, the preachers, to give them notes. I’m coaching them. I’m there for support. But I preach 10 days ahead of them on a Thursday night for our live online recording. And so we look at online not as an outpost. Online is a separate thing.

Bo Chancey — And so our outposts are where incarnational ministry happen in community. Our online service is a primarily a distribution model. And so it’s methodology for distributing content, information, good news, music, sermons, all the things that we’re doing there and communicating back and forth.

Bo Chancey — So in order to do that, I shifted my planning ahead four weeks is a key thing to do. Turns out the same Holy Spirit that was working the week of, he’s working four weeks out.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Bo Chancey — Pretty cool how God does that.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Bo Chancey — And then inviting others in. And so it starts with them evaluating what I’m doing. And so ah we begin each each week we meet for about two hours um on sermon prep, but they have they have four weeks out to the each of the preachers do to look at.

Bo Chancey — We usually have about 12 people around the table every single week who are evaluating each other. Not all of them preach that week, obviously, so they’re evaluating each other, providing notes, taking a look at what I’ve just preached, because they’ll be preaching it the next week, and then working on the thing that I’m gonna preach that week. So and then they have a fourth sermon, so they can be reviewing that ahead of time. And then we’re also scheduled out for the year.

Bo Chancey — So the planning component and coaching pieces became integral, but because of that, now we we don’t have personality-based ministries happening. We are able to utilize personality and allow people to be who they are and use their gifts. And then we also don’t have any kind of satellite where things are revolving around.

Bo Chancey — I mean, we have two outposts that are seven miles apart. One of them was the original one. One of them’s newer and has a much bigger auditorium, which is where we record. But the other one runs a couple hundred people bigger than that one. So it’s like we have ah a thousand people at one, 800 people at another, 350 at another and 100 at another. So where it allows for a variety of size that is really more tailored to the size community and place that they’re in.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. So, ah Jeremy, when you think about alignment, so I love the, you know, the the heart to, you know, to feel, you know, we want to feel local, we want to feel incarnational. But then by definition, if you’re one church in multiple locations across the region, they’re you’re obviously at some level trying to to drive some sort of alignment.

Rich Birch — How do you guys think about alignment? And what are you trying to do or to to to manage consistency? What are the things that you are trying to manage consistency across all those? How have you approached that?

Jeremy Peterson — Yeah, I mean, we definitely want to have consistency across all of our outposts. And so I think a big part of that is Bo and I work really closely with our central team. So our central team has a pulse on what’s happening. And so the central team rotates every single week. We’re not locked into a specific outpost.

Jeremy Peterson — And so I think that that’s a huge part of it is is if I show up at the Lakes, is it going to feel like a service at the Bedford outpost? Is there going to be a similar feel when you show up as far as the way that you’re greeted, um what we offer for kids is going to be the same as the message. So Bo works with the preaching team. They’re working on the message together. And so we want so our worship set, the message, all those will be consistent.

Jeremy Peterson — I think one of the things that’s been really helpful for us is several years back, we created a playbook. And so in the playbook, it it outlines all the ministries across the church. And so not only is it talk about um the culture of love ah that we want it to be so prevalent, we want to have a high level of creativity. And so we put a high level on creativity. We put a high level on fun. And we feel like those things are essential.

Jeremy Peterson — We really want to create and innovate instead of trying to like copy or replicate. So it’s something that we really, really focus on. But the playbook really helps kind of centralize what’s taking place, what’s happening at an outpost level, what what support the central level is is have is is having. And then where’s the collaboration taking place between the two of those? And so I think the clearer that that’s outlined, it’s helpful for the outpost pastors. It’s helpful for the central team to all know, okay, these are these are our lanes um and we’re focusing on this area.

Jeremy Peterson — So like an outpost pastor would have oversight of the staff at that specific outpost. The central team is more of like a coaching providing support, but then there’s always collaboration that has to take place. And the more that there’s collaboration taking place and everybody’s clear on what’s happening, I think that really helps drive um the mission forward. And so I think having that in place is really, really helpful for that clarity.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I’d love to kind of double click on that. I love the idea of a playbook and articulating clarity, obviously, as kindness, being super clear on here here he is, you know, this is what it looks like to be a One Church location. Can you talk us through an area that um maybe you were struggling on alignment? And how have you been able to kind of get, you know, better alignment over these last few years, Jeremy? Could you talk us through that? What what that’s looked like? How is the how has the playbook helped with that?

Jeremy Peterson — Yes, I think it it helps in several in several regards, Rich. I think part of it is, yeah so the typical church… So I went to a ah Christian college, and a lot of the training was, okay, as a pastor, you’re going to pastor this group of people, and you need to spend 20 to 25 hours a week working and and preparing your message.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeremy Peterson — So if you’re doing that that, that really limits the amount of time that you can actually spend in the community, developing people, investing in leaders. And so a huge part of the the the preaching team, the teaching team that works together, is that there between the time that Bo’s putting into it, the other outpost pastors, the ones who are preaching or putting into it, nobody’s spending more than like six, seven hours a week specifically on message prep, which then obviously frees you up for a lot of things.

Jeremy Peterson — And so so there there’s a lot of things that we centralize in like the message will be the same across all the outposts. Kids curriculum will be the same. We do offer some freedom, though. So every outpost has different needs in that community.

Jeremy Peterson — And so the freedom there is the outpost pastor and the team at that outpost, like knowing what are the specific needs of that community. We’re not trying to make it cookie cutter and saying, OK, well, you need to do this with a food pantry, for example, because that may not be a need in the community that you’re in.

Jeremy Peterson — We have some communities that are more affluent. We have some that are much more blue collar. And so a big part of like being the church, um regardless of where we are, it’s finding out who are those strategic partners that are there in the community that we can love, that we can pour into, that we can invest in. And I think that’s where there’s some freedom um at every outpost level to figure out what are those needs and how can we meet those needs.

Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good. Bo, one of the things I love about what you’re doing, you’re modeling ah developing leaders, even within your teaching place, often, ah you know, the teaching seat, oftentimes that’s like the, it can be an exception in a video-driven environment where it’s like the the lead person is like, okay, everybody go develop leaders, except in my area. I’m not developing any leaders.

Rich Birch — I love that you’re modeling that. What is what is developing leaders look like in the rest of the church? How, how is, we know that this model is, it’s a, it’s a resource hog. It takes lots of leaders to make it happen. What is developing leaders look like for, you know, for you, for One Church, uh, beyond just the, the teaching stuff that we’ve not just, but the teaching stuff we’ve talked about there.

Bo Chancey — Yeah, I love that question. I want to dig into that. And I think it’s important because of what Jeremy was just talking about with alignment in that um having the the preachers ah aligned that are preaching there. Because there was a lot, and when we started this, there was a lot of talk around and even questions that we’ll get asked a lot would be, well, how do the guys make the sermon their own? And we don’t make the sermon our own. It is our own. Instead of trying to individualize every message, we’re working on it together and preparing it together. So getting outside of that mindset of going, okay, now here’s some great content. Now now I’ve got to go make it about me. No, let’s make it about Jesus. And let’s let’s keep it focused on Him and and and actually get some more of self out of this. He must become greater. I must become less.

Bo Chancey — And so the stripping away of self, and me personally living that out. We’ve always said to do whatever God’s called us to do is going to involve more dying to self than any of us are ever ah could ever imagine or be comfortable with, but we’re going to step into that.

Bo Chancey — And so the key component in developing leaders is prayer. Same thing with even considering multisite ministry. That’s the thing I tell everybody is don’t figure out if it’ll work, because we don’t even know what “work” means, you know, what success even looks like.

Rich Birch — Right.

Bo Chancey — I mean, God, we we’ve we’ve opened seven total outposts in the time that I’ve been here. Currently, we have four and a fifth one coming, but those the ones that we have closed down are are no longer a part of, we’re not failures in that sense. God called us into those. And so prayer is the key thing.

Bo Chancey — Are you, are we listening to the Holy Spirit? Before you ever consider multisite, is God calling you to multisite?

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Bo Chancey — Is God inviting you into that and asking you to do that? Is that being confirmed in community? Not just you as an individual, but vision, but vision oftentimes comes to a person and it’s confirmed in community.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Bo Chancey — And so when that happens, then you have a higher degree of confidence in the voice of God and to trust him, regardless of the outcome. And now that gets to be really freeing and important. So the same would be true with developing leaders.

Bo Chancey — So we have a residency ah ministry where we invite residents to come be a part of One Church. So they, like this past week, we had six residents who were sitting around the preaching table, and they’re all giving coaching feedback to the people who preached. So they sat in and listened to messages and took notes and gave feedback.

Bo Chancey — And, you know, in between services, the residents sat down quickly with the preacher and gave them, hey, here’s something I thought you could do better or that could use some more clarity. The preachers then did those things and reported back in the meeting about what they was shared with them. So we’re creating, I guess, a culture around saying, hey, we’re all in this together.

Rich Birch — Right.

Bo Chancey — But then that goes back to prayer as well. And this is something I want to tell every leader everywhere. Pray for every single person on your team every single day.

Bo Chancey — The the one regret I have in ministry is that I didn’t do this sooner. This is the the thing that that would haunt me if anything did is that I didn’t do it sooner. But for the last several years I’ve prayed I pray every single day for every single person on our staff, for all of our leadership teams, and our key volunteers. And if you don’t have time for that…might I propose to you…

Rich Birch — Yes, we could just leave a big, giant, pregnant pause there. If you don’t have time for that, why are we doing this?

Bo Chancey — …[inaudible] a radical shift in thinking…

Rich Birch — Yeah. Wow.

Bo Chancey — …new change of mind a change in mindset as someone who was missing that and is now living in that. It is night and day. Like wanting to develop leaders and putting systems to develop leaders and having structure develop leaders and having amazing people like Jeremy Peterson helping create all that. It wasn’t happening until we started praying like that. We start praying like that and the fruit explodes.

Rich Birch — I’d love to double click on that because I think that’s, you know, caught my attention when you’re like, I want every leader to hear this. But but I’d love to hear a little bit more about that. What does that look like for you? How are you, you know, just kind of get us inside that world a little bit. I think that’s a great challenge of even, hey, let’s pray through all of our teams every day. Talk talk us through what that looks like.

Bo Chancey — Well, for me, I mean, it’s part of how I begin every day. So, you know, two hours in solitude and about an hour, hour and a half of that’s in prayer. That’s just a time component. You know, we we currently have about 35 staff on the team. And it doesn’t take, sometimes I pray, you know, just mention their name. Sometimes I know something that’s going on and and pray over them a little bit longer. But I can tell you relationally, when I see them, ah there is instantly something different.

Rich Birch — Yep, yep.

Bo Chancey — You know, different in me for sure. And I’m not in a hurry. So I spend time with residents. I spend time with staff. I enjoy and love, I mean, I don’t just love our staff. I enjoy them. I enjoy the team. I enjoy the preachers. It makes me want to coach them and they trust me. And it…

Bo Chancey — So, and and so that prayer, and then a lot of time, mean, for me now, this is gonna sound maybe crazy in our kind of busy obsessed culture. I usually spend another hour in solitude right after lunch every day, just being still, quiet…

Rich Birch — That’s so good.

Bo Chancey — …praying, meditating. And so more of my time is is spent doing that than anything else these days, which feels pretty amazing.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. No, that’s, that’s a great, that’s great coaching for us, you know, in our culture, like you said, and you referenced it there. You know, we live in a, an overworked, you know, a self-obsessed, I can do it, worry, worry, worry, rush, rush, rush culture. And if we’re not careful as church leaders, we’ll just, we just jump on that train and run with it. So I, I really appreciate that, Bo. Thanks for, for, for leaning in there.

Jeremy Peterson — Well, just a quick…

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Jeremy Peterson — …a quick tag on that, Rich, is Bo shared this with our staff um couple of years back. And it was interesting because some of the frustrations between like Central and the Outpost level, like we realized there was some frustration and some tension that was there.

Rich Birch — Right

Jeremy Peterson — And when we simply asked the staff, like, can you take 30 minutes a day just to be still and pray for the staff members that you work with?

Rich Birch — So good.

Jeremy Peterson — It really changed culturally, even the way that people interacted with each other. I mean, even times now we can have conversations that, you know, I’m frustrated with so-and-so because, you know, this ministry didn’t do this and Central is supposed to provide the support. And usually when somebody is like amped up and frustrated, my first question is typically like, hey, when was the last time you prayed for them?

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Jeremy Peterson — And I sometimes get this look on the ah you know they this look on their face like, oh, I haven’t been doing that. And and man, praying for that, even you know years back, there was some challenge with our eldership team and praying for them every day. When I sit on the elder team, I mean, that’s drastically changed the way that we do things, praying together each week for them. It’s just been a game changer. And it really has changed culturally ah things in our staff. But man, for some of them, it was a lot of dying to self to be like, I don’t have 30 minutes. I’m so busy. I’m busier than everybody else.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeremy Peterson — It’s like, no, you have 30 minutes. Pray for your staff. Pray for volunteers.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeremy Peterson — I don’t have volunteers. Then take time and pray that God would bring you some volunteers. And so I don’t want to undermine that just the power of prayer. I know it’s something we’ve heard and we’ve talked about, but I mean, it really is a game changer for to to put like, man, how how essential that’s been. And to Bo’s point, something I wish we would have done years and years ago.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. I love that. You know, so many churches inherent, and this has come up in multiple of these conversations this month, you know, there is an inherent tension in the campus/central relationship. That’s just that is it’s baked into the model. And I love the perspective of like, hey, maybe maybe maybe this is a prayer issue. Maybe it’s ultimately we got a wrestle rather than let’s find the next tactic. Let’s pull the right lever, get the right piece of paper. Hey, let’s let’s take a step back. I love that.

Rich Birch — Jeremy, could you unpack a little bit more about the residency? I’d love to hear a little bit more about that. How does that fit into your strategy as you think about developing the church, just thinking about the future, that kind of thing? How does all that fit together?

Jeremy Peterson — Yeah, I um the residency is something that started several years back. Currently, we have six full-time residents. We can have up to 10 at a time. And why I really believe in the residency is that it it really is truly a hands-on experience. And part of the beauty of the Outpost model is we’ll have some of the residents who are coming on and they’re really passionate about preaching, like preaching something that they want to do.

Jeremy Peterson — Most megachurches, you would not get a chance as a resident to ever get a chance to preach. But we’ll give them reps in that in that capacity because they’re they have the Outpost pastor poured into them; they’re coaching them. Bo’s doing that as well. And so they’re getting like coaching and feedback all the time, something that they love and something that most of them have never experienced. Most of them, even if they were preaching in college, like they didn’t, you know, all you hear is you leave and it’s like, hey great job. You know, great to hear that. It’s like, you’re not really…

Rich Birch — Slap on the back or whatever. Yeah.

Jeremy Peterson — Yeah, you’re not really getting coaching on that. And so that’s something that they’ve really enjoyed.

Jeremy Peterson — People on our our worship team—they’re doing like a worship residency—that are showing up – incredible vocalists, but, you know, trying to understand things like stage presence, even being able to play instruments. Like we have a couple of residents who came in with like very little or no musical ability. I mean, they’re now leading for our online service, which, you know, which reaches, you know, three, 4,000 people every single week.

Jeremy Peterson — And so given them some of these like tangible, real life experiences where whether they’re doing a one or two year residency with us, we will oftentimes hire some of those residents. Because at times we’ve hired somebody outside, you bring them in and it’s almost like you have to break some of these bad habits that were learned over time and to retrain them.

Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.

Jeremy Peterson — We have a resident who’s praying for one, who understands the culture, um who understands like what we’re trying to accomplish in the mission that we’re doing. It’s been become incredibly powerful. And so our prayer has been like, as God sends us residents, okay, how do we truly pour into them? We’re not just trying to get extra workers. Really we’re trying to get people that we can pour into, that we can invest into.

Jeremy Peterson — And if God continues to call them to New England, um whether that’s with oOne Church or there’s another church in the area or elsewhere, we really feel like this is an incredible opportunity to develop them um and to help them grow as leaders. And, and just to watch some of them flourish.

Jeremy Peterson — I mean, Rich, I wish I could show you some of the residents that, went from the interview process where we’re almost like borderline, I’m not sure that this is going to culturally fit.

Rich Birch — Yeah, is this going to work out?

Jeremy Peterson — Is this even going to work?

Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah.

Jeremy Peterson — To then like watching some of them thrive um in preaching, leading worship, even with our kids, production team. It’s just been incredible to watch them like grow and blossom in that space. And if we want to keep doing more and more um of that because I feel like that there’s, that’s a huge part of us um launching more outposts is is continuing to build this residency.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. That’s, that’s so good. Is it open to people from outside the church? Like if there’s people that are listening in that might know a leader that’s interested, can they do check out your website, get connected that way, if they’re interested in learning more?

Jeremy Peterson — Yeah, actually, yeah, you can just go to church.one/residency.

Rich Birch — Great.

Jeremy Peterson — It’s it’s open to anybody that’s been out of out of high school for at least a year.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Jeremy Peterson — And so we’ll have anybody, you know, typically 20 to like the 28 in that kind of that age range. And and yeah, they can come and spend, we’ve had some spend a summer with us, like do 10 weeks. Most of them will end up doing a year long residency. and then there’s some that are doing a second year um residency. And so, yeah, by all means, we want to try to develop as many people as we can. And it’s just, it’s truly incredible watching, I’ll just talk about our worship team for a second…

Rich Birch — yep

Jeremy Peterson — …because Bo’s talking about the preaching side. But to watch some of our worship people come in that are almost like almost borderline fearful, like not really sure what to do. And then just to watch them bloom to where they could lead worship at just about any mega church around the country, to me, is just incredible to watch that.

Jeremy Peterson — And it really is our amazing team of leaders, not only the central, but the outpost level, like really poured into these individuals on a daily basis. Like I’ll walk by their office and literally just kind of breaking things down and getting some hands-on experience that I’m not sure I’ve seen elsewhere. I’m sure it’s happened other places, but that’s just really special to watch and see see some of them grow um in that area.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. And, you know, just we’ve seen this in multiple churches that we’ve talked to this month, this intentionality around a residency, a longer, some sort of longer structured leadership development process. We’re really seeing as a key part of this movement. It’s a critical piece of the puzzle for sure. Because as we’ve even, we’ve referenced multiple times through this conversation, you know, the finding the right leaders is critical to us expanding more outposts.

Rich Birch — Bo, shifting in a slightly different direction, so and I didn’t prep you this for ahead of time. So, you know, I’m throwing you a bit of a curveball here. But, you know, I feel like New England in a lot of ways, New Hampshire specifically, it’s like in some ways looking into the future. You know, that it is a um more post-Christian community than large portions of the country. And, and your church is thriving. God’s using it. Uh, and so are, there are lessons that I think churches across the country can learn about from One Church to help us thrive for the world that’s on, on its way.

Rich Birch — Talk to me a little bit about what you think some of those lessons would be. What is it that God’s using in the culture you find yourself in, ah at, at One Church?

Bo Chancey — Yeah, um that’s largely, I think, why I’m here. Definitely when I think about the the context we’re in I don’t, I personally don’t like the term post-Christian…

Rich Birch — Okay.

Bo Chancey — …just because Jesus is the alpha and the omega.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Bo Chancey — He’s the beginning and the end. And so there’s nothing after him. It’s him.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Bo Chancey — And, but we are definitely in a post-religious context, which turns out to be incredible for inviting people to follow Jesus um when they’re, they’re kind of done with the rules and regulations and, the rigmarole and you know the all the ah language and you know all the ah the things that kind of come with that.

Bo Chancey — This cultural context is largely over a lot of that. It doesn’t mean that people aren’t trying really hard to resurrect that particular thing, as they do. We love our religion. It’s a lot easier to control ah people with religion than it is an authentic Spirit-driven relationship with the Savior. But um that’s what we’re striving for. So I love being in the context.

Bo Chancey — And then, we at One Church, um we don’t look at our outposts as kind of the ultimate expression of the church. It’s a piece. It’s really one leg of a three-legged stool. The other, one of the other legs would be online. And so we are unapologetic about our presence online and how we utilize online to disseminate information and and to share good news in good news ways.

Bo Chancey — Outposts matter, but they’re not the be-all end-all. It’s not about butts and seats and buildings and brick and mortar and you know names on the back on the front of buildings or or even this kind of notion of, you know, closing the back door. We dropped the retention thing and said, we’re not gonna close the back door, we’re gonna blow out the back wall. And bless and send, bless and send, bless and send all day long. Cause God has a long history of of moving people and leading them and we want them to listen to him.

Bo Chancey — And then the third leg of the stool though is what we call life posts. So which is really just a matter of being the church where you live, work and play. And that is the most neglected because it’s the most difficult to evaluate, the most difficult to ah count, um control, everything else.

Bo Chancey — But so we’re looking to say, how can we resource people to be the church in their home, in their neighborhood, and the communities that they’re involved in and where they’re working or going to school, and that they understand that that’s what the church is and that that’s what they’re a part of.

Bo Chancey — And and so is where so even as we evaluate what we’re doing at the outpost level are we doing that or are we trying to get churchy people in churchy places doing churchy things, as opposed being the church um wherever they are, because we produce a lot more fruit. So we really want to reach the most people in the shortest time and release the church and steward the church to be the church.

Bo Chancey — This is a phenomenal context for that, ah because there’s not as much recent history holding them to that. So with that though, innovation is hugely important. Creativity. And so it’s, It’s not that we don’t learn from other places and other contexts. We certainly can and do. It’s very important that you know we’re creating. And so we’re creating music. We’re we’re creating the messages that we’re doing. We’re creating the the the methodologies that we’re using. You know, because and when you have a copy of a copy of a copy, it loses clarity every single time.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Bo Chancey — And the the freshness and so that is required here is really refreshing. So we get to step into that. So that’s the thing i always want to encourage everyone is is really look at where you are this time and place and go, what are the opportunities that are before us? And how do we step into those? Because it’s going to be uncomfortable. And it’s going to you know disappoint certain people’s expectations for sure. You know, but to count the cost of really being a part of building the kingdom and doing that.

Bo Chancey — We get to do that here in New England and feel a strong responsibility to do that and to continue into that. And but it’s also I will tell you, like only 4% of the population in in New Hampshire would consider themselves to be, you know, followers of of Jesus in the evangelical sense or anything like that. So it’s like shooting fish in a barrel up here. Like, I mean, they’re…

Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.

Bo Chancey — …they’re everywhere. Like we we got to baptize 400 people last year. And…

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s amazing.

Bo Chancey — Yeah, so we’re just sharing good news in good news ways, loving people with God’s love like he loves, and having a lot, a lot of fun while we do it.

Rich Birch — Love it. This is part of why I want to continue to point people towards you guys. I think you have so much to teach so many of us. And so I, I yeah, I really appreciate that. Thanks so much, Bo.

Rich Birch — Jeremy, kind of as we’re coming down to land the plane here, when you look to the future, what are you guys thinking about in the future for Outposts and your multisite journey? What are questions you’re wrestling with as you kind of think to the future? Where does where does that lend you as you, yeah, just as you’re wrestling with those things?

Jeremy Peterson — Yeah, I think we realized that part of the what we need to do to carry out the vision is to have more worship services and more places to reach the most people. And so one thing we’re really working on is and we’ve already identified where the next location for our next outpost will be. And I think we’re trying to do that within like a 30 minute proximity of another outpost.

Jeremy Peterson — And so part of the challenge in the past is we had a church in in Vermont approach us. The the distance of like over two hours between us and them, it became a challenge. And so I think part of the some of the culture, some of the chemistry with the staff, I think some of the consistencies I think a lot of that is just is how do we continue to collaborate together. And if you’re not closely connected it becomes really really difficult to do that.

Jeremy Peterson — And so so, I mean, Bo and I have talked about, you know, we really want to, you know, we want to see us in having 10 outposts in the next, you know, three or four years. And and a lot of that, I think, is going to some of these more rural communities where people aren’t necessarily, I’m not hearing lot of church plants go into communities of 5,000 people, right?

Rich Birch — Yes. Right. It’s true.

Jeremy Peterson — They’re trying to find a community of, you know, 50-, 100,000 or more and trying to go to some of these areas.

Rich Birch — Right. Everyone’s reading the same statistical studies and planting their churches in the same places. And they’re not in New Hampshire, rural New Hampshire.

Jeremy Peterson — Yeah. And so we really feel a call to find out several things, like where are people coming from?

Rich Birch — Yep.

Jeremy Peterson — Like we have we have people that are driving an hour to come to One Church. And so finding out where are some of these families coming from? How can we go there? How can we be, you know, how can we be Jesus in those communities? And so that’s that’s what we really have kind of on the forefront.

Jeremy Peterson — And a lot of that goes to continue to build the residency, continue to build leaders. I think one of the things that we’ve done this round is we brought on um the next outpost pastor in August…

Rich Birch — Oh, nice.

Jeremy Peterson — …and we probably won’t launch the next outpost until the following August.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Jeremy Peterson — And so having people on our team to understand like like who we are a bit of deprogramming and reprogramming what we, what we’re trying to accomplish a church, I think is a big part of what we’re focusing on and really just developing leaders. And I think, as we continue to develop leaders, God’s continuing to open up more and more opportunities for those next outposts.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Love that. Exciting, exciting times. Bo, I’m going to give you the last word here. What would you say to leaders who are thinking about multisite, wrestling with this? Maybe they’re thinking about new campuses. They’re wondering, hey, is this what God’s you know leading us to? What would you say to some leaders that are thinking about about this approach to ministry?

Bo Chancey — Pray. I know I mentioned that before…

Rich Birch — No, it’s good.

Bo Chancey — …but I’ll give you even a little little prayer strategy in this regard. Get a a group of leaders together and share what you think is on your heart, what you’re hearing from God in regards to multisite ministry, or new outpost, or location, or campus or um whatever terminology you might be using. And share that with them and then invite them in to confirm or not confirm what you’re hearing in prayer um by joining you in prayer.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Bo Chancey — And so what we do is we’ll agree on a specific question to ask God. And so the question we we would have would be, um you know, God, we, or God, you want us to plant an outpost in this specific community. And then we’ll pray over that for a week, um fast and pray the last 24 hours, and then we’ll get together, break our fast, sing a worship song, and then share what we’re what we’re hearing from God.

Rich Birch — So good.

Bo Chancey — And so far, every time we’ve done that with anything, we have come to conclusions faster than you could ever imagine.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Bo Chancey — And so slowing down, praying and and waiting on the Lord a little bit in that way has enabled us to move further and faster and with fewer hiccups, you know, and and massive mistakes um than ever before. So the the prayer component is, I think, the most important one.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. This has been a great conversation. I really appreciate you guys taking time out to be with us today. Encouraging conversation, challenging conversation. I really appreciate it. Jeremy, if we want to send people online to track with the church, to track with you guys, where where would we send them? Where should we send people online?

Jeremy Peterson — Yeah, I think the best place is just go church.one. And that’s probably the best place.

Jeremy Peterson — If they want to check out our YouTube page, um just type in um One Church, New Hampshire, and ah you’ll be able to see, um yeah, just ah kind of a glimpse into what God’s doing in this area.

Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much, friends. Appreciate you being on today.

Bo Chancey — Thank you.

Jeremy Peterson — Thanks, Rich.