Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re joined by Jeff Beachum and Curt Banter from Portable Church Industries (PCI), a company that has helped more than 4,000 churches launch, expand, and thrive in portable environments over the past 25+ years. PCI specializes in helping churches create high-quality worship, kids, and guest experiences in rented or temporary venues—without sacrificing excellence, volunteer health, or long-term strategy.

Is your church growing and starting to feel the pressure of limited space? Are you wrestling with what comes next when your building is full but a permanent solution feels years away? Curt and Jeff share how portable solutions can help churches keep momentum, reach more people, and make wise long-term decisions—without rushing into costly permanent buildings too soon.

Learn more about Portable Church Industries and see samples of their work at portablechurch.com.

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Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Super glad that you’ve decided to tune in today and you are going to be rewarded for that. We’ve got a really important conversation, I know for many churches that are listening in, particularly if your church is growing and you’re thinking about the future and you see some constraints around you, we wanna help release some of those constraints today.

Rich Birch — And I’ve asked good friends, Curt Banter and Jeff Beachum from Portable Church Industries to come and be on the on the call with us today, because they’ve got some stuff that I know can help so many of us. If you do not know Portable Church, they help churches thrive in portable venues. For more than 25 years, Portable Church has helped literally thousands of churches launch strong and thrive in a mobile setting. They design custom solutions that fill that fit each budget, vision, and venue. They really are amazing people. And I’m so glad to have you on the show today, Curt and Jeff. Welcome. So glad you’re here.

Curt Banter — Great to be here.

Jeffrey Beachum — Glad to be here.

Rich Birch — Why don’t we start with Curt? Tell us the kind of portable church, you know, summary. You bump into someone and you they yeah they ask you where you work and you’re like, I’m CEO of Portable Church. What what is that?

Curt Banter — Yes, yes. That’s a popular airport question. That is a very, what is that exactly? And I always…

Rich Birch — Right. Is that on wheels or something? What is it like, you know.

Curt Banter — Exactly. I always tell people like, well, we build portable systems to help churches function in kind of rented spaces is, you know, the deal. And it’s production, it’s kids, it’s lobby, it’s the whole thing. It’s it’s the experience on a Sunday morning in a rented venue.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s fantastic. And Jeff, give us a sense of the scope of both the services and kind of solutions that PCI provides. Like when you say you help that, what does that, what does that mean? Is this just like a bunch of ideas or what what do you actually do?

Jeffrey Beachum — So Portable Church provides absolutely everything that a church needs in order to do church the way they do at their home campus, except we don’t provide the pastor, and the people and the place. But, I mean, we do everything else from, like Curt said, production, everything you need to do children’s environments, everything you need to get people on the campus with wayfinding, greeting them, coffee, right down, if we don’t recommend it, but right down to the communion wafer and the baby diaper. We can do it all.

Rich Birch — Nice. Right. Yeah, it’s incredible. Well, today we want to frame the conversation for churches that are listening in that are particularly growing and are thinking about the future and maybe are coming up against some capacity issues. Jeff, when a church starts to approach, say, let’s picture a church, maybe they’re approaching 70, 80% of their weekend capacity. What kind of questions do you hear those leaders wrestling with? What are they thinking about, as they’re thinking about, hmm, what do we do next?

Jeffrey Beachum — Well, luckily I’ve run into some ah amazing executive leaders that carry the vision and the execution of a church. And those are usually the two primary people or positions. And there might be multiple people involved in it. But those are the two positions that really are looking in their crystal ball and trying to say, all right, based on The seats we’re filling, the parking lot the way it is, the corridors that are jammed, the children’s ministry, how high a pitch our our volunteers are screaming. We need to be thinking down the road about what are the solutions. And those those people typically, those good leaders are asking questions about, all right, what can we do onsite?

Jeffrey Beachum — And eventually, if this keeps going, and we’d love the momentum to keep going, what are some off-site solutions? And so that’s what we like to help take leaders through is even if they don’t use it, the more they know, the better they’re going to be.

Rich Birch — And what, when you think of the questions that they’re wrestling about kind of the onsite offsite question, what would be some of those things that, why would they be at that venture? Like what, what is it about, you know, these, this kind of threshold of 70, 80% that starts pushing them to be like, Ooh, maybe it’s like, what are the pain points that they start feeling that are like, okay, that we’ve got to start thinking about something, you know, different down the road.

Jeffrey Beachum — Well, this we do this thing, I like to call it chasing capacity, because once a church opens its doors, and if they’re blessed by God and they’re doing all the things that they should be doing, they will forever be looking for that elusive extra seat so that people can hear the gospel.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeffrey Beachum — Well, when they get into that position, um they they immediately begin to think, we only have so many seats. It’s a finite number and we’re growing. So how how do we get more? And on-site solutions might include stacking services, adding another third, fourth service. It could mean expanding the footprint of the whole building that you’re in. It could be moving from a smaller room to a bigger room. It could be a variety of solutions on-site to help all those situations. And and there’s a lot to consider when it comes to children’s space, worship space, getting people in and out between services and parking and all of those things.

Jeffrey Beachum — Eventually, someone has to be looking at what the offsite locations might be. And and to be honest with you, that is a finite thing. There’s only you can find a green piece of grass and and build a brand new building, which takes a lot of money, a lot of time. There’s commercial properties that you can go into now and build them out, which is always fun and exciting and good good solutions. Mergers is popping up and then portability. Those really are the only four options that are out there for a church to consider going off-site for another site or to launch a new plant.

Rich Birch — Cool. So Curt, from when we think about, again, this church, they’re, you know, they’re reaching 70, 80% capacity. They got full everywhere. Like and they look around and it’s like not and enough seats, not enough kids space, not enough parking. From a design and systems perspective, kind of the running side, what often do you think that we miss at that moment in a church life? Like questions we’re not asking or maybe things we misunderstand about that?

Rich Birch — Because you guys see this all the time. These are the people you work with all day long.

Curt Banter — Yeah.

Rich Birch — What are the things that we maybe misunderstood?

Curt Banter — Yeah, I think, you know, a lot of people are trying to, they don’t want to lose momentum. They don’t want to lose people. They they start, especially I think people kind of a knee jerk sometimes that it’s like, oh you know, people to come in the door. I can’t find a place to sit. They’re going to, you know, they’re to, people are going split.

Curt Banter — And so they’re really nervous about that. So people will tend to do the things that are maybe more black and white and make choices that feel concrete. Like I could build a thing or I could add a service or I could do different things that will cost money and maybe not as much in terms of personnel. But I think sometimes the the tricky part is is that the strategy is really key because what you’re building now is going to lay the foundation for so many other steps down the road.

Curt Banter — So it is important to really kind of step back for a minute and make some choices about you know what that means for your staff, what that means for long-term capital spending or whatever it may be before you kind of just leap into those decisions. And then you’re stuck with things that maybe don’t grow so well, or, um, are just bandaid solutions.

Rich Birch — Yeah, trying to make the long term. That’s hard in the middle of the chaos of it to step back and say, hey, what what is the best decision here?

Curt Banter — It is, it’s really hard.

Rich Birch — Even though I’ve got, you know, I’ve got problems right now. What’s the best decision for us to make it this for this next step? Jeff, what happens if we’re in this again, thinking about the same kind of church, if we wait too long, if we, because I’ve actually seen this in churches where I think it’s like it’s like we don’t have faith that what’s happening now is going to continue. And we think, well, maybe maybe next fall, all these people won’t come back. Now, we would never say that. And then we wait and we hesitate for a year or two. What’s some of the risk there that we should be thinking about?

Jeffrey Beachum — Well, it it is a scary thing to see God moving and and being amazed at what’s happening in front of you, and and really taking that and getting a gut gut feeling, the right gut feeling to say, God is doing something here and we just need to be able to provide ways for him to keep filling seats.

Jeffrey Beachum — And so momentum is very, a tricky thing and you need to be able to keep the momentum going, keep people encouraged. And, and if you don’t, I’ll just share one story. Um, I was at a church. I’ll just tell you my church. I was at my church. I love my church. It’s a great church and got there at Easter time, got there early cause we knew better. And I, I’m old, so I went out to the bathroom and I came back in, and as I was coming back in the doors were closed and there was a sign there that struck me big time and it said: no more seats in the sanctuary. And it pointed to another place where they could go. Well, nobody wants to sit in the second space, no matter what it looks like, and that no more seats available. What if that was the day, you know?

Jeffrey Beachum — And so momentum, you need to be able to keep it going. It’s tenuous and you can hit speed bumps with some of the things that you try to do, but you you really need to take courage in what God is doing and what the skill set that he’s provided for the executive leaders to make these decisions and say, we really believe that God is asking us to do this and make plans for that next thing, whether it’s the on-site solution or the off-site solution.

Jeffrey Beachum — But if nobody is thinking about it and nobody is ready to make those decisions, that’s where you hit a wall and you stop growing. And in my mind, I think once you’ve let people know that that’s not important enough to keep seats open so that more people can come in, I think that has a negative twist to the momentum piece.

Rich Birch — Oh, for sure. Yeah. And there’s, there’s, you know, people won’t invite if there’s not empty seats and there’s, you know, there’s all kinds of interesting, you know, you know, correlations there for sure. So again, thinking about the same church, actually literally earlier today, I was talking to a church, there are three services on a Sunday morning, adding a fourth. And I was asking the XP, how’s it going? And he said, well, we had our, they have like their main parking lot and then they have like the grass parking lot. They’re part of the country country where you can do the grass parking lot. And he’s like, our grass parking lot this last weekend, we’re recording this in early January, was full. And he’s like, we did not anticipate that. And he’s like, I know I’m at least four years away from a building program. I’m not sure, you know, what, what to do. And I thought it was kind of funny that I’m talking with you guys today as well.

Rich Birch — So Curt, when you think when, and so this, this guy was a little freaked out because he’s like, man, we got years before we can think about, and he’s thinking permanent building. So when churches are thinking about expanding, many of us, we jump right to permanence. Hey, how long is it going to take? You know, if you talk to our friends on that side, there’ll be three years to, you know, and lots of money.

Rich Birch — What have you learned about the danger of kind of skipping this, maybe some sort of interim in between step? Talk us through, you know, why maybe permanence isn’t, shouldn’t be our first step when we’re thinking about this.

Curt Banter — Yeah. No, I mean, yeah, and I often tell people, I like, I love the permanent space. I got no problem with that. But if the momentum is really flying and things are going fast, that that is that is a big chunk of why we exist. I mean, we can build a design. You know, you can, it’s, it’s if you you need to find a location. You need to figure out your team. There’s a lot of steps that need to happen in here, regardless of whether you’re going to be building a building or doing a portable church or whatever it may be.

Curt Banter — And so this is a, it’s a great time to kind of figure out what the next steps are. And it really is, it’s an opportunity to, to trial things. And like I say, for us, the big deal is is, you know, instead of that four year window, that kind of thing, I was just talking to somebody yesterday and they said, well, you know, how many, how many months would it take? And I said, well, if if we’re talking in months, we’re in good shape. Because sometimes people show up and they’re like, Hey, we need to do something in 10, 12 weeks. And I’m like, okay, we could probably do that. You know?

Rich Birch — Right. We can hustle.

Curt Banter — Yeah, I mean, and that’s that’s pretty low risk. Like if you can get get something off the ground in 10 or 12 weeks, you know, that…

Rich Birch — Right.

Curt Banter — …that that gives you opportunity to really take advantage of that and not have to freak out about what my next step is and figure out how am I going to excavate or get a architect involved or, you know, whatever permitting all these things, which, you know, yeah, you’ll get to that. But we don’t have to really work through a lot of those issues to get something launched fairly quick.

Jeffrey Beachum — If if I could…

Rich Birch — Jump in – yeah, absolutely.

Jeffrey Beachum — …we, we recently did a case study of a church down in Florida and they, it’s an amazing church in itself, but they went to a campus and thinking they were only going to have to be there for a couple of years because they had a property across the street. And what happened in that campus was amazing and God blessed them.

Jeffrey Beachum — And After they ended up, instead of being there two years, they ended up being there four years. As they were getting into their fourth year, we said, you know what, we need to capture this because this is exciting stuff that they could do. They had 6,000 people on a high school campus on an Easter Sunday…

Rich Birch — That’s crazy.

Jeffrey Beachum — …which is wacko in my mind.

Rich Birch — Sure.

Jeffrey Beachum — But we went down to capture it. And the theme that kept coming out of the volunteers and the leaders that we interviewed was, why would we have waited? Why would we have put this off for four years? Look what happened in the four years that we were in this environment. And now we get to walk across the street in a few months and fill a brand new building. And they did. They walked across and they added a third service immediately. And now just six months later, they’re up to five services. So that I like to call it an incubation time…

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeffrey Beachum — …in portability where they can grow and they can test their mettle. They can test their leadership. They can let the community know here’s what we do and here’s who we are. There’s a lot of great benefits to being portable first.

Rich Birch — Okay, sticking with you, Jeff, and and with that idea, this frame of like, a hey, we’re going to, you know, maybe like you’re saying test or take the first step towards a long term plan that’s portable. I’m sure you’ve had a lot of those conversations with churches over the years that have done that.

Jeffrey Beachum — Yeah.

Rich Birch — I’m sure some of them were like, maybe hesitant at the beginning, and then they do it. And then there’s learnings that come back. They they discover, oh wow, this this was different, better. Here were some of the advantages of going portable first. What would be some of those?

Rich Birch — I hear the idea of like, in that church’s example of like, hey, we actually were able to start reaching people rather than waiting for four or five years for a building and then start doing that. We actually start to do that now. That’s a great benefit. Any other, that kind of thing that comes back that people are surprised they didn’t see on the, on the, on the outset.

Jeffrey Beachum — Well, I think people are surprised when they go portable, at least in our experience with portable church, we we see churches are able to bolster their volunteer base. Normally you get into experiences like that and volunteers, you know, they they they do it for a while and then they say, I’m out. But in our case, it’s intuitive enough and exciting enough, and they see the results that the volunteers usually grow in that case.

Jeffrey Beachum — Another great example purpose for going portable first would be to become a part of the community that you’re targeting for that that next facility that’s going to be permanent. If the community sees that you are already a part of them and that you make a difference, they’re going to make it easier for you to get the permissions to get everything constructed in a timely basis. They’re not going to get in the way because they see the value of having you already in the community.

Jeffrey Beachum — And then there’s always, you know, the the the end result is that when people are hurting and you go into a new community and you answer a need and they they get to go to a place that they’re familiar with, the school, the YMCA, movie theater, whatever that is, in a very comfortable setting that they’re already familiar with and learn about Jesus and have hope restored. So there’s just a few, but there’s a lot of reasons to go portable first.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Jeffrey Beachum — Yeah.

Rich Birch — I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this. In fact, I’m pretty sure I haven’t. So the church I’m at now, next year, 2027, will be a 20-year anniversary. And although I’m not on staff anymore, I do this full-time. I’m still a part of the church. I love it. And you know they have like the organizational values. And we we had one of our campuses was portable for 17 years using a Portable Church Industries system. I know you know that, Jeff.

Jeffrey Beachum — Yeah.

Rich Birch — And when we, I was like emotional when we were putting those cases away and like unpacking them. It was like, oh my word, like this was like a big deal. And actually one of the the staff team’s values, I just saw this yesterday, I was in the office, is we push cases. And, you know, they they internally, even though they’re not portable anymore, we push cases, this idea of like, hey, we’re all in. And it’s like this thing they kind of tell each other. And I actually think friends like I’m I try I’m trying to be like the unbiased, like, oh, I’m just interviewing these guys. But like, I love Portable Church. I love what they’re up to. I love how you help churches.

Rich Birch — And I think your systems, the actual physical systems that you make are like the biggest competitor to you because I bump into them all the time. You know, a decade later, 15 years later, this stuff is still rolling out there. So, Curt, when you design a system where, you know, let’s say we’re we’re headlong in. We’ve said we’re going to do this. We’re going to we’re going to go portable. What do you prioritize? Is it experience, efficiency, volunteer experience, future growth? Talk us through how that kind of the the framework for how your team thinks through the actual design of these things, because it’s it feels like magic to me that, you know, it all comes together. It’s incredible.

Curt Banter — Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it’s it’s funny. All those things are important. And I think a lot of what you have to do is when we go when we go and meet with a church, we talk through all that stuff. You walk in the building and you get a sense of, okay, what’s your identity? What, you know, how does it feel? What does what does the environment look like? What’s your auditorium experience? What’s what’s your kids? You know, what kind of security do you want? There’s just all these environmental questions that we’re trying to figure out.

Curt Banter — And obviously budget plays a part in it as well, but it’s sort of a balancing act. You’ve got to sort of gather all the information in terms of who they are, what what are they trying to achieve, what’s their timeline, you know, and then you’re kind of baking all that into one big pie and trying to figure out how to you know, balance it all together.

Curt Banter — But yeah, it’s it’s different. And it’s funny, I was I tell people, I’ve told Jeff this story, is like, when we sit down with a church, I always tell people, like, if there’s 10 things that are important, don’t assume that I know what they are, because the 10 things that are really important to this church are not the 10 things that may be important to you.

Rich Birch — That’s so true.

Curt Banter — And every single system has to be, we really base it around what is the the core values of that team, that church.

Rich Birch — And how, reveal what that looks like a little bit for people folks. Cause I do think this is, this might be, this isn’t like a pull it off the shelf kind of thing.

Curt Banter — No.

Rich Birch — You’re building a custom system for people. What does that kind of consulting process look like? How do you, how does that actually, what’s actually look like, Curt?

Curt Banter — Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So a lot of times we’ll we’ll set up a consultation, we’ll go in and it’s a it’s a full day of discovery, right? So it’s a lot of meetings with, it could be the executive pastor, we’re meeting with the production team, we’re meeting with the kids people, everybody, people that are making coffee, literally, you know, every part and piece of it.

Curt Banter — And it’s a lot of just listening. It’s it’s a lot of me writing notes and figuring out what’s important to people. And yeah, we’re also talking about sound boards and PAs and you know lighting systems and all that kind of stuff. But it’s it’s tons and tons of gathering and information. Because yeah there’s there’s not there’s really nothing about the system that’s stock. Every single part and piece of it is customized for every client from some of our most budget systems to systems that are gigantic with lots of trailers and and lots going on, so. But yeah, it’s that data, that customization for each client is a gigantic part of what makes us, us.

Rich Birch — Yeah. And I’ve said to folks who have used you when I knew they were you know coming up to a consultation, I’m like, just just mirroring the same thing you’re saying, just tell them everything. Like don’t like don’t hold back and you know and and talk through it all ah and be really clear.

Curt Banter — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Sometimes people come back and the system’s like, well, that’s maybe not what we were hoping it would be. Maybe everyone has like, what is it? Platinum Dreams and you know they have a smaller budget or whatever.

Curt Banter — Oh, yeah, yeah.

Rich Birch — But but but that’s okay.

Rich Birch — That’s a part of your job is to try to help them right size it and and all that. Jeff, kind of on the brand consistency. Oh, sorry. Jump in. You were going to say something there. Yep.

Jeffrey Beachum — I was just going to follow up with what Curt said, because I’ve attended with Curt a number of the consultations, and just walk away amazed at the value of just being being able to have Curt sit in a room with the leaders and how it feeds to the leaders really well.

Jeffrey Beachum — And so some some significant things that I’ve seen Curt do is help them to understand it. So what kind of a what does your worship feel like? And what kind of sound system do you use? And there are some churches now that I say have the Cadillac of systems and they have the best of everything. And it could be really expensive. And if they’re going to multiply sites, that could get expensive over time.

Jeffrey Beachum — And I’ve seen Curt be very gracious about, all right, so you have this top line equipment. If you’re going to do this two or three times, wouldn’t you like to like jump down to a Buick? and And have your people get really comfortable up with a Buick. Because to be honest with you, only the the professionals recognize the difference between a Buick and Cadillac. All of them still have four wheels and a steering wheel.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Jeffrey Beachum — And so he’ll talk about that. And then another key piece is that depending on who’s in the room when Curt does the discovery, he talks about the balance that people really don’t get to the worship space where the high production happens for 7 to 10 minutes. And they pass a lot of things. So there’s a nice balance to the design of the system with the children’s space, which I think is probably as as important or more important than the worship space, because no parent wants to go in and be have misgivings about what the space looks like and what’s going to happen to the child that they’re going to abandon into the care of these people and then walk across the street and the pastor think for one minute he has their attention enough to to preach the most important hour or 20 minutes of of their life…

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeffrey Beachum — …to change their life. They’re thinking about what the heck did I just do to my kids?

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeffrey Beachum — So I’ve seen Curt very graciously help them balance everything out and say, this is how it is important. And it’s important that we we get it into a system so that it can be done with volunteers quickly and they can have success every single time, every single week.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Jeffrey Beachum — And they can be excited and feel they’re as invested in the message that of the gospel as the pastor is.

Rich Birch — Well, let’s double click on that with you, Curt. You know, I think there’s a lot of executive pastors listening in today and, and I have had this experience as an executive pastor. I’m like talking to some tech person and they’re like, we need the—using Jeff’s thing—we need the Cadillac. Like, you know, the gospel will not go forth without, you know, the Cadillac. And and and I look at all this and I’m like, it’s numbers and letters on a page. And how do I understand all that?

Rich Birch — How do you help leadership teams really not either over invest or under invest, particularly on the technology side? Because that side, you know, a kids panel, you know, that stuff, it feels like, okay, that’s pretty consistent. But this area feels like, man, we can, it’s like sky’s the limit. So how how do you help churches on that piece particularly?

Curt Banter — Yeah, I mean I mean, one of the first things I almost always do is I’ll ask people, to say, are you okay, so do we do you have experts coming to run this, or do you have staff coming to run this, or do you have volunteers running this?

Rich Birch — Yes.

Curt Banter — Because those are two very different things…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Curt Banter — …and if you’ve got volunteers coming, which a great majority of our churches do, then you’ve got to think about who you’re designing this for, right?

Rich Birch — Yep.

Curt Banter — And that is a problem because a lot of production directors are like, this is what I want. I’m like, are are you going to run it? Because if you’re not going to be there, it doesn’t really matter that much, you know. So a lot of times we’re really trying. I mean, sometimes i hate to be the wet blanket, but sometimes I think, and i can i can I can speak the language. I know what all the letters and everything mean.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.

Curt Banter — But sometimes I’m trying to back them off a little bit to say, look, let’s build a system that’s repeatable. Let’s build a system that anybody…

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so true.

Curt Banter — …maybe not anybody, but certainly your volunteers, somebody who’s equipped to do it, can do that, set it up in a reasonable amount of time. And and and every week they’re not having to try to troubleshoot it and figure it out and because it’s so complex.

Curt Banter — And yeah, that that may be the right system for your main campus. But a lot of times at these portable locations, we’re trying to do something that’s fast, efficient, volunteer friendly. that’s That’s really key.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s that’s a critical piece.

Curt Banter — So we’re I’m constantly bringing that kind conversation back around to, okay, that’s great. There’s a trade-off in time. There’s a trade-off in expertise. Do we want to do that, you know? And sometimes we say, yeah, that one, we we do want to do it, but maybe we don’t do it over here. there’s you know So it’s always a balancing act there a little bit.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that that to me, that’s a that’s a critical piece. I think it’s such a great thing that that you guys offer to help us think through that. And what is the nuance there and and be another like another voice in the room? Because I think sometimes we end up in those conversations with the with the pro or person that wishes they were a pro you know tech person. And there’re it’s like…

Rich Birch — It’s like they’re they’re they want like the all the bells and whistles, but at the end of the day, they’re not going to have to solve these problems long term.

Curt Banter — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Let’s, Jeff, let’s talk about the volunteer piece, particularly. So, man, I’m here in like set up, tear down, rolling stuff, plugging stuff in. You know, we we know that churches live and die on volunteers in every location, but it’s particularly true in in portable environments. How do systems, well thought out systems from the front end help us win with volunteers, you know week in, week out, not from day one, but then continue over the years.

Jeffrey Beachum — Oh, well, and actually that’s that’s a part of Curt’s team and production and integration and all of that. the The system that Portable Church uses, if you think about it, the the Portable Church has to have all the same stuff your home church has. It’s just all put into a portable system. So you need all of that.

Jeffrey Beachum — And and I’m betting at your home church, you’ve built that up over a series of 5 to 10 years. And here you get it all in one shot. And because that you’re starting out with church and it has to be done well. So you don’t have boomerang volunteers that say, oh, I tried this and I’m going back home. We don’t have that.

Jeffrey Beachum — So some of the things that help with that is that they are designed for that repetitive nature where everything goes in the same place in the case. So every case is designed custom for that particular room. And so one group can come in and set everything up and a whole different group can come in and put it away after you’re done with your one, two, three services. And and it all be in the same place because it everything, every piece has a home and within each case.

Rich Birch — Right. That’s good.

Jeffrey Beachum — And then every case, has a specific place on a trailer because we advocate for trailers and we can explain that later, but everything is weighted out. So we have people that actually weigh each case and where it should go on the trailer so that we’re not breaking some of your volunteers’ hitches, that we’re not having stuff abandoned on the side of the road.

Jeffrey Beachum — And so there’s a meticulous design that goes into meeting the needs so that the church can be effective. And allowing the the case system to be productive. And we have people, kids as early as 10 or 12, they think it’s cool to be able to be a part of that.

Rich Birch — It’s so true.

Jeffrey Beachum — And so they’re from 12 to 80 years old pushing these cases and being helpful in a way that maybe they’re not teachers. Maybe they’re not Sunday school teachers. Maybe they’re not preachers. Maybe they’re not people who welcome you know easily, and they don’t have those skills, but they love pushing the cases and being a part of that.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s true.

Curt Banter — Yeah, that’s to to tag onto that.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Curt Banter — That’s, I mean, the the teams I’ve been a part of in the past, we’ve, we’ve had groups of volunteers that never would have served in a permanent location.

Rich Birch — A hundred percent.

Curt Banter — They had no, they had no place there. They had no home there. Guys that pull trucks, people that are on the security team, people that are bringing in food to the green room, whatever it may be. And they, they really do. They find a home there. They find connection there. It’s not just about the serving. It’s also about the community. They’re very much interlinked.

Rich Birch — Yeah. 100%.

Jeffrey Beachum — And it’s important enough that we we warn churches. So when you go from portable to permanent, you need to find a home for all these amazing volunteers that they can continue to to serve.

Rich Birch — Yeah. And we’ve, I was going to echo that. Like I’ve seen that time and again, in campuses have been a part of where we’ve gone from portable to permanent. And even though I’ve seen it, I’m like, there are a group of these volunteers that are like, they’re the backbone of the church. Like the, it’s all theoretical until the roadies show up and set the thing up. Like we’re, we’re theoretically doing church this weekend. And then this group of heroes show up and, you know, make it all happen.

Rich Birch — And it is a group typically, it’s not always, but it’s my experience has been, it’s typically a group of guys who they don’t necessarily, they love it, but they don’t necessarily fit in other places. And they get this like foundational role in the church and love getting a little bit sweaty. And it’s the systems are designed so they’re not super hard.

Rich Birch — One thing I want to say too, as a friend, like I remember years ago, this is again, probably 20 years ago with Pete, the founder of Portable Church. I was, I was at your location at the production location. And was, I was like waxing eloquently about, man, these cases are incredible. And he like, and you’re going to know what this is. I can’t remember the exact stat, but he he was showing this one case with this door that like flips down and you know he’s like, well, you know, if a certain person of a certain height, if something gets dropped into the bottom of that case, that door is designed so they can lean down and pick it up out of the bottom of that of that case. And he had some stat around like, you know, well you know, like X number of volunteers typically are this.

Rich Birch — And I was like the amount of thinking that’s gone into the design is incredible. like And these are not like these just boxes that you’re pushing around there, although they are, they’re thought through, like lots of small things throughout the entire system that always strike me. I’m like, man, that’s just such a great idea, which is you know pretty incredible.

Rich Birch — Curt, coming back to kind of an a little bit of an earlier question, I want to, there may be people that are listening in there like, yeah, I strategically get that. Maybe we’re going to spend a little less money. We could do some sort of like portable thing to help us before we go, you know, long-term. But some leaders might hear portable and think cheap, temporary, not great, ineffective, not on brand, all that kind of stuff. Help us think through how portable it really, yeah, how does that, what how how do you respond to that? How do you respond to those kind of potential criticisms?

Curt Banter — Yeah. Yeah, I think I was trying to think of, ah you know, what, what causes the cheap thing. And I, I, I hate to say it, but I think sometimes it tends to be a DIY situation. It tends to be something where it’s, it’s that we talked about it earlier, that emergency situation, like I’ve got to figure out a solution.

Rich Birch — Right.

Curt Banter — And so I think sometimes people that go out and they grab this and they grab that and pull together. And now you’ve got this, you know, And there are churches that we go and work with where we sort of refresh the system or optimize the system.

Curt Banter — And a lot of times you’ll see that where it’s just stuff in a trailer.

Rich Birch — Right.

Curt Banter — I mean, it’s just, they’re in boxes. They’re in, you know, cardboard, seen TVs and cardboard boxes that have been in those cardboard boxes for five, six years, you know, that kind of thing.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah.

Curt Banter — And I think that’s the, I think that’s sometimes maybe where the cheap comes from. And, and it’s the, the deal with us is, you know, everything’s thought out, right? Everything has a home. Everything has an an an intention in the way that it’s stored, used, trainability in terms of, you know. So, you know, I often say to people like, look, people go and pay lots and lots of money to go see concerts at big venues, right? And that’s all portable. It doesn’t have to be cheap. Those aren’t cheap. It’s really, it’s dependent upon, you know, what is your budget and what is your volunteer base and everything else. It doesn’t need to be cheap. And even at lots of budget levels, it doesn’t look cheap because there’s really a lot of thought that’s put into how it’s used.

Curt Banter — So I don’t think, you know, there’s lots of opportunities to make it look great in a portable situation, but But yeah, it has to be, and like you were talking about with Pete, it has to be thought out. It has to be engineered. It has to be put together in a way that’s easy and fast and and looks good and has quality about it.

Rich Birch — Well, and this this gets to how many churches you guys have worked with. Like, this is the insane, like, it’s some giant number. Like, it’s I know I said thousands at the front end, but what what is that number, Jeff? What is that? It’s it’s some huge number, right?

Jeffrey Beachum — I, I think right now it’s got to be north of like 4000 churches over the last 30 years.

Curt Banter — Something like that.

Rich Birch — See, this is friends. This is what I’m saying. There are people that are listening in and you’re like, we could just do this on our own. And I’m like, well, why would you do that? Like talk to the people who have, they, although your situation is super unique, they’ve worked with 4,000 other churches in super unique situations and have helped them figure it out. And man, like that’s, you wanna leverage all of that thinking to help you figure out, okay, how are we gonna get this to work at, you know, insert junior high, high school, whatever it is, you know, bowling alley, whatever it is, wherever you’re you’re moving into, that’s that’s great.

Jeffrey Beachum — Yep.

Rich Birch — Curt, oh, sorry, go ahead, Jeff.

Jeffrey Beachum — Well, I was just going to so I would also, when it comes to the value piece, ask how how valuable is it for you to have and to continue the momentum that you have going into your next, your next facility, whatever that is.

Jeffrey Beachum — So you’ve got a gap when you finally realize, man, we got to do something and we got do something fast. Portability can be done within three to four months. We can have you on the ground, in your site and probably for an investment of maybe 3 to 5 or 7% of whatever that end expense is going to be, could be invested to keep that momentum going and to make things stronger.

Jeffrey Beachum — And so with that gap between we need to land somewhere and landing in a permanent spot, you could have anywhere from a three to five year gap that could be highly productive in a highly professional environment with professional gear run by your volunteers.

Jeffrey Beachum — And I don’t know very many, I mean, there are some guys that do DIY and do it well, but I don’t know very many that take into consideration all those engineering feats…

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeffrey Beachum — …that originally were thought up 30 years ago and Curt’s team continues now.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeffrey Beachum — They produce a system that is amazing and helpful. And most of our the churches that we work with, they they come back. In fact, Liberty Live, we just did another interview with Liberty Live, and they were gushing about how much we’ve helped them with several sites. And it’s wonderful to hear that they’re effective because of us putting you know a carpet on wood and putting the right stuff in the right places and helping them to share the gospel.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s incredible. That’s so good. Yeah, and i love that. You may not like what I’m able to say, but I’ve said this behind your backs. But, you know, so so many times I’ve said to leaders when they’re thinking about this exact moment, I’m like, okay, so let’s talk about worst case scenario.

Rich Birch — Let’s be the like, okay, we we launched this location and this campus and we’re, you know, we’re excited about it. It’s working well. But, you know, we don’t know. You don’t know what’s going to happen there.

Rich Birch — Well, the beautiful thing about a portable system is like, let’s give that a run for two or three years. And but best case scenario, four years, like the example you used, four years, we end up moving into some other facility. Well, that’s great. Well, what we do what do we do with this portable system? We take it and put it somewhere else, which I know you’d like us to say, you buy a new system. But but but I say, just take it and you know get them to come back and retrofit it…

Jeffrey Beachum — Yes.

Rich Birch — …and then go into a new location which you can’t do I don’t know any, and I’ve known multiple churches that have done exactly that play, which is, you know, just, you talk about stewardship. That’s just incredible use of the resources that God’s given you.

Rich Birch — It’s amazing stuff.

Curt Banter — Yeah, we’re in the process of…

Rich Birch — Well, as we’re coming to land here, sorry, go ahead.

Curt Banter — …to say we’re in the process of talking to several churches right at the moment that are that are retooling systems that they’ve had in play for 5 to 10 years.

Rich Birch — Right.

Curt Banter — And it’s exactly it’s an engine, right?

Rich Birch — Yes.

Curt Banter — They use it for growth. They retool it and they put it back out there to do the next one. And that’s part of the plan. It’s not a happenstance. They they that is the plan, like is to always keep pushing that thing forward.

Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, absolutely. And that DUI thing, DUI, that’s different. DUI, do it yourself, DIY. That’s a Freudian slip. The that happens in churches all the time.

Rich Birch — You know, a friend of mine’s church, they were, you know, I was like, you really should be using Portable Church. And they didn’t use Portable Church and they came to their opening weekend and a key piece of gear did not fit through the door. Jeff knows the church I’m talking of.

Rich Birch — And they, you know, I was, you know, the leader that I know is like a little bit frustrated with, you know, with all that. And I happened to see pictures of their launch and I’m like, oh, you got it through the door. And they’re like, no, we did not get it through the door. We ended up spending more money and figured out like an older thing or something and retrofitted. And I’m like, gosh, like, you would have saved all that hassle just talking to someone who’s gone ahead and figured out how do you fit all this into a box and get it through a door.

Rich Birch — As we’re coming to land, maybe a couple last ah questions, maybe one for you, Jeff. If if there’s a leader that’s in this, they’re they’re facing the capacity pressure right now, what’s kind of one step they should take in this next 90 days? Where should they go next? and then I got one last question for you, Curt, as we wrap up.

Jeffrey Beachum — So the next 90 days, I would say, certainly you’re not going to land in a new location in the next 90 days. But what you can do is you can take a look in your crystal ball and say, I think something could be in our future and begin to know what you don’t know.

Rich Birch — Good.

Jeffrey Beachum — And I would say there’s a lot about going portable, the benefits of portability, some of the processes involved that we would love to just tell you about and inform you about so that 12, 18, 24, even 36 months down the road, you you have that knowledge and you say, all right, I’ve got this one in my pocket. I know I can do this. And we would be here to help you.

Jeffrey Beachum — So I would say in the next 90 days, give us a call and talk to us and say, hey, I don’t know when we’re going to do this, but I kind of feel that we’re going to have to. Can you help me understand and learn about it?

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Jeffrey Beachum — I guess that’s the best step.

Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s fantastic. You can go to your website, right? Portablechurch.com/Jeff, I think is the answer.

Jeffrey Beachum — Yes.

Rich Birch — If you want to actually talk with you, which is amazing. I’ve so i’ve told people that I’m like, Jeff will get on the phone and talk to you. Like he’s a real live human.

Jeffrey Beachum — Forever.

Rich Birch — And at the end of it, it’s not like, you know, there’s a, you know, a credit card, you’re buying a new system. That’s not what it is. It’s like, Hey, we want to help you understand early, get in the process. You cannot start the conversation too early. You know, I appreciated Curt saying like, hey, I talked to this leader and they said maybe 10, 12 weeks from now I need something done.

Rich Birch — Don’t do that. Like start early. Like if you’re as and they say they’ll do that. That’s fine. That’s that’s Portable Church. They’ll actually help you. But from my end as an operator, I’m like, even if you’re inkling thinking like early in the we might be doing something down the road. I’m not even sure if this is an option. Call Jeff – he’d be happy to help you.

Rich Birch — Curt, for you, senior leader of the organization – you know, Portable Church is doing a great job. 4,000, we’re looking forward to that when you click over 5,000 churches. What would you say to a leader that’s listening in today as they’re thinking about expansion, maybe a senior leader, like, you know, a lead pastor, that sort of thing? What kind of words of advice or wisdom would you give them as we wrap up today’s episode?

Curt Banter — Yeah. It’s funny, like as, as people are growing and they’re expanding, we’ve talked about this a few times, but think about, you’ve poured everything you got into your, especially if you’re in one location, you’ve poured everything you got into that one location. All of you’ve got your special sauce and all of those people that are really talented at what they do. And now you’re like, we need to grow. And maybe that’s another location. And okay, how how are we going to do that?

Curt Banter — And I think a lot of people are really commonly saying, okay, we’re going to stretch that base over two. And a lot of times you can sort of get away with that a little bit. But what tell you what you go to three or even as you really fully expand into two, you’re going to feeling it. And so the the thing I would always say is, again, think about your long-term strategy.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Curt Banter — Think about what you’re going to need in terms of your team, in terms of repetition and process. And it just it’s going to serve you so well in the long run to be thinking about how the people play into this and how you’re going reproduce it versus just you know getting through this moment.

Rich Birch — That’s so good. Well, appreciate you guys being on today. Again, if you want more information on Portable Church, you can just drop by portablechurch.com. There’s a ton of information on there, lots of helpful resources and all that.

Rich Birch — And if you want to talk to Jeff specifically, just go to portablechurch.com/Jeff. He would love to jump on a call with you and talk you through whatever you know kind of issues, or even if it’s just like, hey, we’re kind of thinking about this.

Rich Birch — What questions should we be asking? He would love to jump on a call with you. So thanks so much, gentlemen. I appreciate you being here today.

Curt Banter — It’s good to be here.

Jeffrey Beachum — Thanks. Appreciate it Rich.

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Jason and Nan Britt from Bethlehem Church, one of the fastest-growing churches in the country with three campuses in Georgia—and a fourth on the way. Jason serves as Lead Pastor, while Nan has pioneered a powerful inclusion ministry called Bethlehem Buddies, designed to help children, students, and adults with special needs fully participate in the life of the church. In this conversation, they unpack how inclusive ministry became a defining part of Bethlehem’s culture and how any church—regardless of size—can take meaningful steps in this direction.

Is your church unsure how to serve families affected by special needs? Do you feel overwhelmed by where to start or afraid of doing it wrong? Jason and Nan offer practical, hope-filled wisdom rooted in real-life experience.

To learn more about Bethlehem Church and the Bethlehem Buddies Network, visit bethlehemchurch.us. Churches interested in starting or strengthening inclusion ministry can email Nan directly and take take a look at Bethlehem’s Buddies Volunteer Handbook.

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

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Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Risepointe

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

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

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

Rich Birch — Hey, friends. Welcome to the unSeminary Podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. I really want you to lean in today. This is one of those issues that we see in churches all the time that I really hope tons churches that are leaning in or listening in today will lean in on this issue, particularly if you’re a growing church. This might be one of those just up over the horizon issues that it that you can get ahead on and work ahead on now and and actually create more space for more people in your community.

Rich Birch — Really excited to have Jason and Nan Britt with us. They’re from Bethlehem Church. It’s repeatedly one of the fastest growing churches in the country with three locations, if I’m counting correctly, in Georgia. Jason is the lead pastor and Nan has championed a program called Bethlehem Buddies. And we’re really looking forward to pulling this apart. They offer that all campuses and they provide inclusive support to help preschooler, child, teenager, and adults with special needs transition smoothly into one of the church’s worship environments. So Jason, Nan, welcome to the show. So glad that you are here.

Nan Britt — Thank you.

Jason Britt — And we’re thankful, thankful for for you having us.

Rich Birch — Yeah, Jason, why don’t you tell us, kind of give us the picture of Bethlehem Church, kind of tell us a little bit about the church, kind of set the picture. If we were to arrive…

Jason Britt — Yeah. Yeah.

Rich Birch — …on a typical weekend, what would we experience?

Jason Britt — Yeah. It’s three campuses, hopefully four soon. They’re all revitalization story. We just actually relocated our broadcast campus about a mile down the road. We’re a year in now…

Rich Birch — Nice.

Jason Britt — …December when you’re broadcasting this. And so we opened, new and it’s a revitalization story, multiple services, and it’s just a church that had history. And all of our campuses, Rich, are revitalization stories, too.

Jason Britt — And it was a church with history that just had the courage, if you will, to envision a new future or be open to envisioning a new future. And we’ve been here for 14 years. It was my first senior pastorate, and it’s been a phenomenal year. And the church has just embraced the mission of leading people to discover new life in Christ in all areas of our ministry.

Rich Birch — Why don’t we stick with you, Jason, and double click on revitalization.

Jason Britt — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Kind of pull apart that picture a little bit, help people, because I know there’s people that are listening in today that are on the other side of revitalization. And they’re thinking, hey, you know, what were some of, you know, you first stepped into that journey. What were some early questions that you were asking that really about that kind of led you to the place of like, hey, this is what I think the church could become. Where what started that journey for you?

Jason Britt — Yeah, I think even in the process of, you know how it goes in different denominations or tribes have different ways of calling a pastor. And so for me, as I talked with the group that was selecting a pastor, the church had been plateaued for a number of years, plateaued, declining, kind of fell on that. And ultimately, my question for them is, what’s your limiting, have you guys considered your limiting factor? You know, and I think our church, although the heart was there, it did not reflect the community as a whole. And so by that, I mean the heart for mission was there, but not the intentionality of mission, if you will.

Jason Britt — And so we really kind of began a two to three year journey of what would it look like for our church to reflect our community. And our community, Rich, we’re outside we’re kind of the bedroom community of Athens Georgia.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Jason Britt — All of our campuses surround the college town of Athens and it’s very family-centric, very kid-centric. I mean it’s not a high single adult population out here, if you will. This is where families live. And so we really needed to double down and become incredibly serious about the next generation and reaching families.

Jason Britt — And I think it was just the reality of getting intentional with what our mission and heart was. The church wasn’t, I think I heard years ago, maybe on your podcast or somebody else, a pastor say, when you take over a church, one of two things are happening. They either believe they won the Super Bowl or they believe they’re losing every game.

Jason Britt — Neither he goes, neither—I think it was Jud Wilhite said, I’m not sure…

Rich Birch — Okay. Yeah, yeah.

Jason Britt — …He goes, neither are true.

Rich Birch — Right. That’s good.

Jason Britt — But you have to understand their psyche…

Rich Birch — Right.

Jason Britt — …and the way they see their ministry. So for me, the gift of Bethlehem, Rich, was they were, they were, they were ready to win. I didn’t have to convince them they had to change a ton. I just had to, in many ways, give permission to see things differently. That if you will, the local church tends to be drift toward insider focused…

Rich Birch — Yep, that’s true. Yeah.

Jason Britt — …and the gospel is very outsider focused. And so for us, it was a lot of, if you will, deconstructing some things before we reconstructed, a lot of examining the fruit of what we were doing, not the intent. You know, that was a lot of the earliest, probably where lot people that you’re listening, your listeners are in revitalization. A lot of it’s not what we, early on, is not what we need to do that we’re not doing is what we need to stop doing that we’re doing.

Rich Birch — Right. That’s good.

Jason Britt — Right. And that’s the hard part, the deconstruction.

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

Jason Britt — That was my first two or three years. It’s when I had a full head of hair and no gray, you know what i’m saying, bro? And so it was good though, man.

Rich Birch — Yes, for sure.

Jason Britt — And so that was our early days of really the heart didn’t need a lot of work. The direction and the intentionality to mission, if you will, strategy and vision. So.

Rich Birch — Well, I think there’s a lot of churches that are listening in that I think can relate with that idea of like, hey, the heart of our church is is right, but we’re not really taking intentional steps. And at some point as a leadership team, you realized that there were families that wanted to participate fully, but needed something different in order to do that. That’s ultimately what led us to what we’re talking about today.

Rich Birch — What opened your eyes to that gap? What kind of got the ball rolling for you as a leadership team, for you specifically or for our leadership team as you were thinking about this issue?

Nan Britt — Yeah, so, um you know, we’ve always been in ministry, Jason in ministry, but really my calling has been early on in special education. You know, that was my training and experience.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Nan Britt — And ah so professionally, you know, that was my job as a teacher. And so really for the first 10 years of our marriage, Jason walked alongside that road with me. And so the students that I taught really had a lot of needs. And so we really got to know those families. We were really immersed in the special needs community of families.

Nan Britt — And so as we came to Bethlehem, we knew, we just knew this was such a great need. This was really an unreached group of people in our community. And so we were excited at the opportunity to be able to serve these families. You know, with him taking that role as as lead pastor, we wanted to make that a priority with our church.

Nan Britt — And so that was that was an easy way for me to get involved as a volunteer. So I served as a volunteer for several years because that was just my experience and training and gifting and, you know, what I felt called to to do to to take what I had learned and really use that, you know, in the church.

Jason Britt — Yeah, I think we’ve been to some great, we served at two great churches before we came here, awesome churches. If I said them, many of your listeners would know they were awesome and we have nothing, but I remember us being there. A lot of times it was, as we as we were serving there, it was not a, nobody’s against special needs ministry. It just seems overwhelming.

Rich Birch — That’s true. Yeah.

Jason Britt — Right. And that’s what you find is nobody’s against doing it. It’s just kind of what it seems overwhelming, if you will, or where do we even start? And so I think for us, when we came, our kids were young. And as Nan began to It just began as with one person.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jason Britt — And really beginning inclusion there. It was more of instead of being overwhelmed by it, almost, if you will…

Nan Britt — Yeah.

Jason Britt — …taking a step in and giving the example of what of what that looks like.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. I love that. And let’s let’s start, we’re going to get into some tactics in a second, but Jason, I want you to think about from like at a 30,000 foot point of view. My impression as an outsider, looking at this, you know, what you guys are doing, it’s pretty robust. You’ve created a pathway for children, students, adults with special needs to be fully included. And we’ll talk about what that means in a minute. But it to me, i think this could struggle if it’s just a tactic. It seems like what you’ve done has been able to talk about it really at kind of a cultural, this who we’re trying to be. So talk to us how we do that as senior leaders. How do we move this from beyond just like this is another thing we do to like, oh, this is a part of who we are. This is how we see ourselves.

Jason Britt — Yeah, and and Nan could probably fill a little bit of the gaps here, but I think for me, I would say two things to senior leaders or senior teams if you’re talking about that. I think the cultural piece is when it becomes a kingdom of God, everybody’s invited at the table.

Nan Britt — Yes.

Jason Britt — The least of these, marginalized, which we know the gospel – Jesus is more drawn to empty hearts and empty lives than he is full rooms, if you will, you know? And so then in our society, the poor, the marginalized or the least of these is not only poor and impoverished, but oftentimes it’s families who have lived and wrestled with and, walk through this. And so creating space for everybody, I would say was a very, for us, Jesus-centric type thing.

Nan Britt — Yes.

Jason Britt — It was like this, if we are for the least of these, if we are for all people, that was one of our kind of core values as Bethlehem Church is a church for all people, right? Gospel, for God so loved the world. That’s a pretty broad path right there, the world.

Rich Birch — Right. Yes.

Jason Britt — So then let’s be intentional there. And, and the thing that I would tell you now, and as Nan gets into the tactics, we didn’t do this to start. This wasn’t the reason. The reason was it was the right thing and we could do this, but, Rich, man, I am telling you, when you begin to serve these families and and you see the joy and the blessing and what it does to the heart of the church, you cannot exchange.

Rich Birch — That’s true.

Jason Britt — Serving these families, when I talk to other pastor buddies that are stepping into this or some good friends that are in the Buddies Network who would do this, I’m like, man, what it does for the whole of your church when it comes to the heart of Christ, you know, and we’ve seen it go from one kid to three serving 300 families a weekend now. And so it’s been a crazy thing. But what it does for the overall mission and heart of the church and the volunteers and the church seeing this is a powerful thing.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I would agree. You know, we talked a little bit beforehand about yeah when I esrved at Liquid Church for years, and this has been a part of our story there. It’s like of my proudest things that we had been a part of. And but but I want to take a step back. And Nan, can you help us understand when you say the word inclusion, what do you mean by that as opposed to separation?

Rich Birch — So I’ll paint a bit of a picture for you. Maybe I’m a church of, I don’t know, 5-, 600 people. And sure, there are some kids that we can see. There are kids with special needs. And and I’m like, don’t don’t we just want to create a place where we can like put those kids away so they don’t bother us? Again, I’m I’m using hyperbole.

Nan Britt — Right.

Rich Birch — Obviously, I’m playing a bit of the devil’s advocate. I don’t actually believe that.

Nan Britt — Right.

Rich Birch — But what what do you mean by inclusion, not separation? What does that look like?

Nan Britt — Yes. Well, inclusion simply means that you are, in the church setting, looking at preschool ministry, kids ministry, students, adult ministries, and really just looking for opportunity to include everyone into those environments. You know, and we know that some people, individuals with disabilities, just may need some individualized love, care, and support. But I think inclusion also speaks more importantly to honoring people and seeing people as individuals.

Rich Birch — So true.

Nan Britt — And so, for example, we know that a 30-year-old man with Down syndrome looks very different than a five-year-old with autism. And so inclusion is honoring and seeing a person for who they are. And so we want to invite a 30 year old man with Down syndrome into the same opportunities that we’re inviting other 30 year old men in in the church.

Nan Britt — And so, so that just gives an example and it actually simplifies things a lot. You know, you you’re really whatever is being offered, you know, at your church, for each age group, you’re you’re simply just opening up that opportunity for our kids and adults with disabilities and special needs to be a part of that.

Nan Britt — And then, like we said, we just know sometimes that may mean they need some individualized support in order to be a part of those ah great ministries happening. But it I think inclusion really speaks to honoring that individual and seeing them, what they can contribute to the body of Christ.

Nan Britt — And so we know everyone wants to be included, but belonging is really the goal. You know, people, we we know the difference, you know, as people when we’re included in a place, but when we’re invited to to to contribute back…

Rich Birch — So good.

Nan Britt — …and to use our gifts and strengths, you know, that’s when you really feel a sense of belonging. And so I think that’s the power of inclusion versus just, hey, let’s just provide a separate space and because this is what we’re supposed to do.

Rich Birch — Right. Right. So can you get tactical on that? What does that actually look like for, because I, you know, I, I understand doing this at a one or two people, but at scale, 3-, 400, 500 every weekend over a year, like that’s, how do you actually do that? We’ll stick with you, Nan. If I’myeah, what what does that look like? How do how do we provide that care? How do we and how do we learn how we can best support people and then communicate with them and all that? What does it kind of…

Nan Britt — Yes.

Rich Birch — I know there’s a lot there, I understand…

Nan Britt — Yes.

Rich Birch — …but but give us kind of an overview. We start there.

Nan Britt — eah, that’s a great question. I think it’s really important to first define your goal of like…

Rich Birch — Right.

Nan Britt — …okay, what is our goal and why are we we providing disability ministry, special needs ministry? And what I believe is the goal of it is that so a family can attend worship, can attend a worship service together on a Sunday morning.

Rich Birch — Great.

Nan Britt — That is the goal. You know, first, over other nights of programming happening at your church, we believe that we want our families to hear the gospel message, the hope of Jesus, to experience worship, prayer, sit under preaching. And so that’s why we we want to focus on inviting them and providing support around a worship service. We know most likely for parents to be able to attend the service, then that means their child or adult is going to need some individualized support and care.

Nan Britt — And so that’s that’s where the Buddies team, the Buddies ministry comes in. And so ah you’re going to need some some volunteers. And so really, i think that simplifies it a lot because I think churches get overwhelmed to think, man, do we need to provide something every time the doors of our church are open? And I would say a great place to start and focus on is we want families to be invited to your worship service.

Nan Britt — And then equally, ah we want our individuals to experience the love of Christ, grow in their faith, be be in community um with others. And so I think that’s the place to start is while mom and dad get to attend a service and they’re siblings, then we provide a volunteer to pair up with kids and adults with disabilities.

Nan Britt — And then from there, you already have these great ministries happening in your church, kids ministries, student ministries, sometimes on a Sunday morning. And then you’re able to just join in the great ministry happening with that buddy support with a child.

Nan Britt — And then I do think that if you have the space at your church, you can also offer a classroom space for kids and adults who prefer a quieter setting or do better in a small group setting. Then you can offer another space that that also has the same great ministry happening. So I really think those volunteers drive the ministry…

Jason Britt — Yeah.

Nan Britt — …and then just get to participate in with with all the great things happening on a Sunday morning at your church.

Rich Birch — I love that. Jason, can you, let’s talk about it from the side, because Nan was talking there about the volunteer side of the equation. Let’s talk about it from that end.

Rich Birch — What have you seen, kind of what impact has adding buddies and adding a really robust inclusion culture to your church?

Jason Britt — Yeah.

Rich Birch — How has that kind of impacted the volunteers who are and engaged in this ministry?

Jason Britt — Yeah, I think a couple things and our kids will be examples, but they’re friends as well. What you see is there, and and we’ve seen this with male leadership, is there are people that would probably not raise their hand and say, hey, I want to be in preschool or kids ministry. But the chance to pair up and walk with a teenager with special needs, to be included, to be a one-on-one individualized and walk into our kid’s town or our midtown, which is our younger environments, it’s very empowering. And, I mean, it just opens opportunities for connection. And that’s one thing that we’ve seen, that we see people who may not want more than handing out a, but if you will, just on the Sunday service, if you were the Sunday morning weekend environment, serving opportunities, obviously there’s more in the church, but those coffee, parking lot, greeter, than kids ministry. A lot of your churches that you minister to look similar ours, you know what I mean?

Jason Britt — And so what we found was that stream of empowering and inviting, and candidly our buddies ministry, is stronger in the recruiting aspect than our kids or student ministry because it’s so unique and it calls things out of people that maybe the other don’t, if you will. We’ve seen that. And so I would say that that was one of the benefits that we didn’t know early on. Nan maybe did just because of her background in special needs. But as we’ve seen it, I mean, you know, students, it’s a powerful thing when you’re watching a 16-year-old, 17-year-old high schooler, when you’re watching them walk with a five-year-old with autism or Down syndrome into a children’s ministry class. That’s just a pretty powerful thing. The humility, the ownership, there’s just…

Nan Britt — Empathy.

Jason Britt — …empathy. That rich, the discipleship piece of that’s incredibly strong. You know…

Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely.

Jason Britt — …that just in this simple, it’s not filling a hole, it’s empowering. And so that’s one of the things we’ve seen. I mean, I know you’ve been around, if you were Liquid, even the Night to Shine, obviously the the Tim Tebow thing.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s fantastic.

Jason Britt — Even that, that’s probably the big mass on a mass scale we do where the church is incredibly involved. But then the opportunities it’s opened up for us on the outside of the church to partner with other nonprofits and bring nonprofits that for serve families with special needs, but we get to bring a gospel presence to that.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Jason Britt — And that’s because of what we’re doing internally. So I’ve seen both of those things that the mission fulfilled in ways that it’s not just serving those families with special needs, but taking the church to a place we’ve never been.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. And, you know, to underline something you said there that we’ve seen through multiple conversations that I think when we cast a big picture and a big responsibility to volunteers, they will step up to that. In fact, they’ll actually lean in. They’ll be like,I’m this is great. This requires a lot of me.

Jason Britt — Yes.

Rich Birch — I would love to lean in.

Jason Britt — Yes.

Rich Birch — So Nan, what have you learned about, let’s keep keep on this whole topic here, volunteers. What have you learned about recruiting, finding these volunteers, training them so they feel prepared, confident, like, you know, this is your professionally, you said this…

Nan Britt — Right.

Rich Birch — …your this is your professional background, but, you know, you take your average 16-year-old, they’re not professionally equipped for this. And so how do you help them get to a place where they can be a buddy?

Nan Britt — Right.

Rich Birch — Talk us through what that looks like.

Nan Britt — Yes. It’s, it’s really, it’s so exciting. That’s something that I’ve always been passionate about to connect people to purpose. And so, and then like you said, to take what I have learned and, and really, put it into terms and, and easy ways, easy strategies for, everyday volunteers to feel equipped.

Nan Britt — And, and, and so I think that we, a lot of our training materials have come from that that we love to share with churches because we that’s something that we prioritize is we we have many volunteers that serve that do have a background in special education a lot like myself with experience, and I think they’re needed for sure in this ministry. But we have the majority of our volunteers are teenagers and adults who are businessmen. They own their own construction company. Women who you know are stay-at-home moms. Teenagers who, yeah, who would say, hey, I have a heart for this. I’m available. And we love that. We think that that is absolutely the right person to serve. And so we’ve just found some easy ways.

Nan Britt — We are highly prepared on our end as a staff. to ah provide the best experience possible for the volunteer and the child on a Sunday morning. And so we do that with, we have a great family form that we have all of our families fill out. We’ve done that for 11 years. It’s a really detailed form. And so we feel like that gives us so much great information about the child or adult that we’re working with, that the parent has given us. Their interests, their likes, things that their dislikes, what to do to to help them stay calm and engaged. We utilize that every week. We get that in the hands of the volunteers so they feel equipped to to know the child they’re paired up with.

Jason Britt — Yeah.

Nan Britt — And then we we have great just engaging activities and and Bible stories and worship that that just provide the best experience possible for for an hour and a half on a Sunday morning while they’re with us. We want our volunteers to feel supported, to just enjoy being with their child or adult. You know, we say your role is to be their best friend on a Sunday, to hang out. We really prioritize connection over compliance. You know, we’re highly relational. It’s very individualized. And so we, I think that takes away a lot of the nervousness for our volunteers.

Jason Britt — Yeah.

Nan Britt — And we really, do have great experiences because church is different. Church is different and should be different than school, than therapy, than camp.

Rich Birch — Right.

Nan Britt — And so you really can have such a a great experience, you know, for an hour and a half, you know, during a service and people feel equipped. We encourage them. We support them. And, and as you know, Rich, people step in to, to volunteer and, but they always come back to us and say, they are so much more of a blessing to me.

Jason Britt — Yeah, yeah.

Nan Britt — You know, they, they are really ministering to me because our kids and adults, you know, just have such a, a peaceful presence and unhurried spirit, gracious. They’ll pray for you. And so they turn around and bless our volunteers and minister to them. And in so many greater ways than we, than we ever really do for them.

Jason Britt — It’s good.

Rich Birch — Yeah, love that. And you use the word buddy, and I’d love to double click on that. You you talked about this, Nan, this idea of be their best friend that, you know, for that 90 minutes every week. It’s not about compliance. Talk us about talk to us about that a little bit more, kind of unpack that a little bit. What does that look like? Because that’s a nuance that I think people might, who have not been around this kind of ministry might not understand that. So unpack that a little bit more. What’s that look like?

Nan Britt — Yes. So that’s, that’s what we choose to call our volunteers, buddies, buddy volunteers. And we we think it’s, it fits whether you’re with a child or with your, whether you’re with an adult with a disability. And I think that, the the beauty and the success of the ministry is it’s just individualized, you know, undivided attention for a whole, like you said, 90 minutes where we want our kids and adults to feel seen and heard and valued.

Nan Britt — And so if you’re a buddy volunteer, you you have that permission to just celebrate and make that morning just all about their child and get on their level, play with them. You know, we we give a lot of direction around ways to interact with people that have differences. You know, if they’re in a wheelchair, if they don’t verbally communicate, hey, here’s some creative ways of of how you can interact with your buddy. And just to that, you know, to to just place such a high value on that child or adult. And yeah, and there there’s so much celebration around it and so much joy. I think people who walk by buddies or around our ministry, that’s the culture of it’s just so much joy and celebration.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s great.

Nan Britt — Even when they’re you’re in the presence of so many complex needs, you know, this is a group of people who have a lot of hardships and and very complex needs on paper, but yet you can still just have such a great experience as a buddy volunteer. And like I said, I think that the reason for it is it’s so individualized and it’s ah based around their interest, what they like, and really valuing them and then sharing the love of Jesus.

Jason Britt — Yeah.

Nan Britt — You know, that unconditional love. That is what we are we strive to share, you know, as a buddy volunteer to our kids and adults.

Jason Britt — And I think, we’re Rich, I would add, I think in your churches that are listening, now, then we’re 10 years in, the culture recruits.

Nan Britt — True.

Jason Britt — Early on, early on, I would say Nan, and she doesn’t give herself enough credit for this, she shoulder tapped a lot of people and would say, hey, you know this is when the church was very smaller and it was. But in the early days, it was a lot of, just like there’s individual care, I would just say the recruiting was individualized…

Nan Britt — Yes.

Jason Britt — …by Nan, tapping shoulders, saying, hey, I see this in you, or hey, I think you could help me. I mean, I think about… You know, our friends, Richard, Andy, some of these guys who were men’s men that are friends of mine that and and she would just be very specific. Would you and and all of them were like, absolutely.

Nan Britt — Yeah.

Jason Britt — Before they even knew what they were getting into.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jason Britt — I just think early on, I would tell you now our culture does a lot of the recruiting.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Jason Britt — But early on it was individualized. I see this in you, that shoulder tapping.

Nan Britt — Yep, that’s true.

Jason Britt — It was never necessarily my vision for it, recruiting people. It was more of the individualized.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Jason Britt — And then now it’s part of our culture, but I would say it didn’t start. It just became a part of our culture.

Nan Britt — Yeah.

Jason Britt — Does that make sense?

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s 100%. 100%. That’s a great thing to underline, even just in general…

Jason Britt — Yes.

Rich Birch — …but specifically in this this ministry, that those early people that we get involved really do kind of cast vision for the future of like, oh, we’re looking for more of these kind of, like you said, whoever those guys are, your men’s men guys.

Jason Britt — Yeah.

Rich Birch — It’s like, well, that then creates a door for like other guys like that to say, hey, I want to be a part of that.

Nan Britt — Absolutely.

Rich Birch — And yeah, that’s good.

Nan Britt — Yes.

Rich Birch — I was also don’t underestimate the the power of the person asking. I know you highlighted this celebrating your wife, but that’s very true. Like that you want to, the person you put in in charge of this wants to be the kind of person that is trusted and is loved and has got some wisdom. So Jason, sticking with you, I’m sure you get calls from leads, from other lead pastors or executive pastors that might have some like common misunderstandings or fears that about starting a special needs ministry. What are some of those fears that they have and what do you say to them to try to say, no, no, you should do this. What are what are the things that come up in a conversation like that?

Jason Britt — It’s great question. I think a lot of times it’s not, it’s, if you don’t have a background or awareness or someone in your family or close to you that has special needs or disabilities, there is a lot of what if, what if, what if.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jaon Britt — And so like, what if the needs extreme, you know, they have feeding tube or they kind of create the worst case scenario or the hardest situation to go, I don’t know if we could ever.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jason Britt — And what you realize is the vast majority, the, the, the, the needs not that extreme. So it’s kind of almost right size and go in. No, no, no, no. I think you’re, you’re out thinking, you know, in church, you’ve been around church, Rich, you know, we have a way of out-thinking ourselves somehow of going, well, what if…

Rich Birch — Sure. Sure.

Jason Britt — Hey, Hey, Hey, there’s a really good chance, you know?

Rich Birch — Right.

Jason Britt — And so I think that’d be one of going, no, I think, but a lot of times it’s not from against, it’s just a lack of awareness.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jason Britt — You know, it’s not, we can’t do this because. I think liability, something that comes up, I mean, candidly, Rich, you know, in this day and age of liability and stuff like that. And I think again, the reality is, we are 10 years in, 300 families. It’s just not something we’ve ever dealt with.

Nan Britt — Yeah.

Jason Britt — You know, got think these families love these kids more than we could ever love these kids.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jason Britt — And so we’re going to be fully equipped and they’re, they’re not, if there’s great needs that, that are, that, they’re probably not going to check them in. They’ll sit with them in the service. You know what I mean? Something like that.

Rich Birch — Yep, sure.

Jason Britt — I think sometimes that would be one. And then…

Nan Britt — Well, yeah, and I would just say, I think that’s when it’s important to have have humility and invite in someone that, like myself that, and I only say myself because like a teacher. Someone who has experience and training professionally in this field so that they’re able to to answer those questions, and to really right size and give a realistic. You know, and I’ve been in some of those conversations before to say, you know, in 11 years, that’s not something that we’ve ever dealt with the church…

Jason Britt — Right. Yeah.

Nan Britt — …but, but, Hey, here’s something else that you need to think about.

Jason Britt — Yeah.

Nan Britt — And so I think it’s, it’s really important. I have a lot of respect for leaders who show humility in saying, Hey, I, I even admit I have some ignorance about this conversation…

Rich Birch — Yeah. Right.

Nan Britt — …and I’d like to invite in so ah someone, an expert in this area to help us move forward in this conversation. Yeah.

Jason Britt — Yeah, that’s been the, I think that’s the, yeah, that’s what we have talked to. Again, it’s almost permission, that Nan’s right, humility and just going, okay, we don’t know what we don’t know, let’s just ask some questions.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jason Britt — But the other thing I would say is, like, we don’t have, um if you will, a room. We don’t have space. We don’t, we’re we’re for it. And I think we go back to our early days, neither did we. You know It was all inclusion-based and all still is before we had a safety room, if you will, or before we had, what do you call it?

Nan Britt — We don’t call it a safety room. It’s just a buddy space.

Jason Britt — Buddy Space. Like like you know if there’s a kid that’s having an issue or or you know something. We didn’t we have a little more now than we did, but back in the day, it was more inclusion and just start where where you’re at.

Nan Britt — Yeah.

Jason Britt — You can do something.

Nan Britt — That’s right.

Rich Birch — Yeah. I think that’s a good word, Jason, that I think we get way too far ahead of us. And we’re like, we and we picture 300 families and like, oh my goodness, what’s going to happen? It’s like, well, how about but we start with the two kids that are right in front of us?

Nan Britt — That’s right.

Jason Britt — That’s it.

Rich Birch — And what can we do to support those families? Nan, you said this, I’d love to invite you in on these conversations. I’m sure there’s churches that are listening in there like I would love Nan’s help. Talk to me about the buddies network. This is a way—I love this—you guys have stepped out to try to help more churches. Talk us through what that is. How do you help churches? How can you engage with them that sort of thing.

Nan Britt — Yes. I mean, you’re exactly right. That’s that’s where the idea came from, is that in our area, you know, around metro Atlanta, around Athens, we are in weekly conversations with churches of of how to start a ministry or just begin, like you’re saying, what are some easy steps, tangible ways to serve families, bring awareness to it. And so we just decided, you know, out stewarding, being a good steward of the the great work God has done at Bethlehem, the resources he’s provided for us that we love.

Nan Britt — Jason and I, we, we, our big kingdom church people. We love partnering with churches. We love knowing other pastors. And, and so that’s been exciting for me just to work with other churches and share with them. I think we’ve learned so much at Bethlehem, like Jason said, from being very small with no budget, no space, being very conservative in, in what we’ve done to now having a huge ministry, a large ministry, having great space.

Jason Britt — Right.

Nan Britt — I think we just have learned so many ways to be able to equip churches. And and that’s really the heart behind it. And so we’ve done this last year, really, I have I’m leading that and and kind of initiating that. We just have put in quarterly quarterly lunches if you are nearby and close to us to join us for that. Quick things to your inbox that give ideas. We share our resources. We’re where we don’t want you to recreate something, spend time on that.

Bethlehem Church — Because like you said, a lot of that a lot of times it’s kids’ ministries, people who already wear a lot of hats at their churches. I mean, they are overwhelmed. They are leading kids’ ministry. We have some a part of our network that are family pastors, and then they have also been given this task of, hey, figure out special needs ministry as well.

Jason Britt — Yeah.

Nan Britt — Or volunteers. They’re not paid. So it’s our desire just to get in there and help equip.

Jason Britt — Yeah.

Nan Britt — And to make it fit the structure of your church. You know, every church is unique. And so ah we just want to make this tangible and easy. And so, yeah. And so we we walk alongside churches really at their own pace, you know, of what they say, hey, we need help with this.

Jason Britt — Yep.

Nan Britt — And in 2026, we hope to keep expanding resources and more so online that really allow churches outside of Georgia, you know, to access more resources.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that which you’ve provided and we’ll link to this, the Buddies Volunteer Handbook. I thought this was great, kind of a I know I love this kind of thing. I’m always like diving deep on, wow, it’s so cool to see what people do. I love this. Talk to us a little bit about this resource. How does it fit in your…

Nan Britt — Yes.

Rich Birch — …like in your process with Buddies and all that?

Nan Britt — Yes. For sure, you know, the first few years, like we’re saying of our ministry, that our our procedures and systems looked more like just a Word document.

Rich Birch — Right.

Nan Britt — You know, something that I would share onboarding volunteers of, hey, this is your role as a buddy. You know, this is what it means to serve at our ministry. This is these are the expectations. This is… And then in time, you know, we created that. It turned into a handbook, you know, a nicely you know printed handbook that that matched really what our kids ministry handbook and our student ministry handbook looked like. And so it is a great resource that that’s how we onboard volunteers and kind of their their first invitation into the ministry of we go through that handbook with them. We prioritize, hey, this is what we say is your role and what a win is in our ministry. So it goes through a lot of our our systems put around the ministry, the procedures. And what I like to share with churches is kind of what Jason was saying. Really, special needs ministry fits neatly into that that umbrella of all the systems and procedures and policies that a church already has in place for kids ministry…

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Nan Britt — …and student ministry, special needs ministry fits within that. And that is the way we function at our church. And so there, back when you said there really is not additional liability or additional policies for special needs ministry. So, that’s contained in our handbook. And yeah, it’s a great resource to share with our volunteers and drives the the goals and expectations of the ministry.

Jason Britt — Yeah .

Rich Birch — That’s so good.

Nan Britt — And that’s what we share a lot with we share our handbook with churches and then our family form. Most churches are saying, hey, you mentioned the form that you give to parents.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Help us understand that. Yeah. Yes.

Nan Britt — Hey, can you share that with us? And we say, absolutely. Just just take our logo off of it. You put your church logo on there.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Nan Britt — And you just just just start using that because that’s that’s another great resource we share.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. So as we’re coming down to land, kind of a same similar question to both you. I’ll start with you, Nan. Let’s picture that you’re a leader within a church who’s got a passion for this area and is like thinking, hey, we we need to take some steps in the next, maybe the next six months, next three months to kind of move this from, hey, we’re helping a couple kids to we want to create a bit more structure there. What would you say to them to like, Hey, here are some first steps that you should be taking to try to expand this beyond something that’s informal to like, we’re trying to make this a little bit more part of what we do, not just something we’re kind of dealing with. It’s like, we’re going to actively add this.

Nan Britt — Right. Yeah, I think that’s a great question. I think something immediately that churches can do is to have a conversation, you know, around kids ministry, around the team on Sundays, and essentially just to have a plan in place of, okay, what would we do if a family visited our church? And just by having a conversation and being prepared, really just allows you to welcome that family without the stress and panic on your face.

Rich Birch — Sure. Right.

Nan Britt — You know, of that we know it’s unintentional, but we never want a family to feel like an inconvenience or a burden or unwelcomed at our church. But simply by having a plan of okay, what would we do if a family came? And I think that that could easily be we’re going to get them checked in and they’re going to go into our kids’ ministry environments. But maybe we can have two or three extra volunteers on call that we would utilize or we might pull from our existing kids ministry classes to be a buddy for that morning for that child in the second grade class. That’s that’s pretty easy to do. But if you have already talked through that, then when a family comes, it doesn’t send you in a into panic mode.

Rich Birch — Right. Yeah.

Nan Britt — And and then, like because as we said, the parents are still there. They’re in service. You can always call them or text them with a question or a need that you might have. And then from there, I think it gives you time to put some systems in place. What that might be like is you you prioritize a Sunday morning service. If you if you offer multiple services, I always tell churches, hey, you know, pick, choose a service and build your volunteer team around one service.

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.

Nan Britt — And then that is a service you can communicate to the community of, hey, we’re offering our buddies team at the nine o’clock service on Sunday morning. We’d love to invite you to attend at this time. That’s pretty manageable for churches rather than feeling overwhelmed of, wow, do we need to offer her volunteers at every service that we have on a Sunday? So just starting small.

Jason Britt — Yep, yep.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Nan Britt — And then, like I said, an easy step is, is, getting access to a family form.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Perfect.

Nan Britt — And like I said, we can easily share that with you because you collect such great information that really helps you feel prepared for the hour and a half that the family’s with you on a Sunday morning.

Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s great. So similar question, Jason, let’s say you’re, imagine you’re a lead pastor and, you know, somebody on their team comes to you and says, Hey, we, we had this conversation as a huddle, like, Hey, what could we do? And we realized we’ve got to add some more emphasis on this. We, you know, if, if we had a family come today, oh, I’m not sure, you know, we might be able to serve one kid or two kids if they came or one or two people if they came, but we’re not, I’m not sure if we had any more than that, that we, and we’d like to add some more volunteer time. We’re not looking for money, just kind of some more emphasis. What would you say to a lead pastor who had someone come to them? How would you kind of coach them to respond to that, to a, to a leader that came with them with that kind of request?

Jason Britt — Yeah, I would say just because I know how does a senior pastor would, hey, we got this, we got this. It seems like there’s always about five things pressing and and and it’s like another thing, you know. I would say see the opportunity.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Jason Britt — That’s what I would just go, man, the opportunity and, you know, see the opportunity for gospel presence. I mean, I think some of my favorite stories, and we don’t have time to get to them, have been families that came or brought their special needs adult or student, or and they’ve been baptized because of that, you know. So the opportunity of it, it is a communit…

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good.

Jason Britt — …of people that in the local church we are for, but oftentimes unintentionally we haven’t been prepared for or, and again, it’s legitimate and get it. I think it’s the, also there’s just great resources. Like I just got, we just came off, I mean, you know, this stuff, Rich, there’s just like there’s people who help out. We just came off of a two-year generosity initiative. And I need help thinking strategically.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jason Britt — I don’t need, you know, and and they help that. Well, there’s people like Nan. Uh, there’s people that are out there that are there to help.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jason Britt — And I think there’s a lot more similarities in churches with people who can help…

Nan Britt — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jason Britt — …than just like I needed in the general there. That’s the same thing I would tell a pastor. Don’t be overwhelmed. See the opportunity.

Nan Britt — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good.

Nan Britt — I would add, I think that’s key that, you know, in the same way that, like you’re saying, in the world of production or other ministries, we are familiar with contracting with people who that’s their specialty. That’s their skill. That’s their experience. I think it’s the same way in this conversation with special needs ministry. I think that is the quickest way to…

Jason Britt — Yep.

Nan Britt — …move along the conversation is to maybe to consider contracting with a person that that has that is a professional in this. It it it will eliminate all of those what-if questions…

Jason Britt — Yep.

Nan Britt — …the fear around it, and someone who knows this this ministry and knows what to do.

Jason Britt — Yep. Absolutely.

Rich Birch — That’s so good.

Nan Britt — You know who’s not surprised by the needs of people with disabilities and special needs. So I think that for churches that And like we said, it’s it’s similar to contracting with other needs around the church.

Rich Birch — Right. Good.

Nan Britt — So just as quickly as you can, get someone in the conversation that is an expert and kind of knows ah you know what how to care, how to care for these kids.

Jason Britt — Yep, yep.

Rich Birch — So good. Well, Nan, we’ll give you the last word. If people want to get in touch with with you, with the church to talk about the network or to just just even learn more, where do we want to send them online so they can access more information, you know, that sort of thing?

Nan Britt — Yes. So ah they are welcome to email me, [email protected]. I would love that to just, like I said, eat weekly, that’s really my role on our staff now is is talking and training and and just working alongside churches. So I would love to connect. And then our website is BethlehemChurch.us, which they can find our Bethlehem Buddies page. Just see a lot of great resources there and then get in touch with our staff there as well.

Jason Britt — Yep.

Rich Birch — That’s great. Appreciate you guys being here today. Thank you so much. And thanks for what you’re doing. Appreciate being on the show today.

Nan Britt — Thanks so much.

Jason Britt — Thank you.

 

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Jeremy Baker, Lead Pastor of Elevate Life Church in Connecticut. In just over three years, Elevate Life has grown from 70 people to more than 2,000 weekly attendees, becoming one of the fastest-growing churches in the country—especially remarkable in a region widely known as spiritually resistant and unchurched. Jeremy shares the honest, behind-the-scenes story of how God has moved, and what his team has learned about loving people well, building invite culture, and helping people take meaningful steps in their spiritual journey.

Is explosive growth possible in spiritually dry regions? How do churches keep the focus on people instead of preferences as momentum builds? Jeremy offers a refreshing reminder that growth is less about formulas and more about faithfulness.

To learn more about Elevate Life Church, visit elevatelifect.com or follow them on Instagram @elevatelifect.

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

Your church is doing really well right now, and your leadership team is looking for solutions to keep momentum going! It could be time to start a new location. Maybe you have hesitated in the past few years, but you know it’s time to step out in faith again and launch that next location. Portable Church has assembled a bundle of resources to help you leverage your growing momentum into a new location by sending a part of your congregation back to their neighborhood on Mission. This bundle of resources will give you a step-by-step plan to launch that new or next location, and a 5 minute readiness tool that will help you know your church is ready to do it!

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Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Pumped that you have decided to tune in today. We’ve got a very good conversation. I’m really looking forward to leaning in and learning from this leader and the story that God’s been writing at his church in the last two and a half years.

Rich Birch — Elevate Church in Connecticut has grown from 70 people to over 2,000 on a weekly basis. It’s been named one of the fastest growing churches in the country. I love their mission and purpose is really simple: making heaven more crowded. Today we’ve got Jeremy Baker with us. He is the lead pastor. Jeremy, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.

Jeremy Baker — Thank you so much for having me. So excited. And what a great privilege and honor to be on on live with you today. So thank you.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I’m excited that to unpack this story a little bit. It is not normal for a church to grow from 70 to 2000 in any part of the country, but even more so in Connecticut. I can say as a guy who served in New Jersey, I’m Canadian, you know – don’t hold that against against me.

Jeremy Baker — Let’s go.

Rich Birch — So I understand the spiritual context that you’re in a little bit. But why don’t you unpack the story? Kind of tell us a little bit what’s gone on over these last couple of years. For folks that don’t know, tell us about the kind of spiritual, you know, climate in Connecticut. Talk us through those issues.

Jeremy Baker — Yeah, I first of all, it’s a God deal all the way. And I know a lot of people are asking me, hey, give me some handles, what’s some formulas, what’s some how-tos.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeremy Baker — I’m just blown away by what God’s done. And I think it’s really just the heartbeat of God is going after his people and serving the community really well. So we’re in an area, I’m 30 minutes away from Yale University.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Jeremy Baker — I’m not too far away from New Haven, Connecticut. I’m in in a town about 100,000 people.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Jeremy Baker — Matter of fact, the building is actually in between two cities.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Jeremy Baker — The building is divided right down in half. One half being, yeah, it’s crazy. One half being Meriden, one half being a town called Wallingford. And so in those two cities is about 100,000 people.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Jeremy Baker — So three and a half years ago, I’m working at a big church in Dallas, Texas, mega-world, mega-church, on staff, XP, and the Lord just pressed on our heart, me and my wife that we’re comfortable. We’re we’re living the good life, we’re living the Dallas life, the big Texas life, and there’s more, you know. And nothing wrong with that, nothing wrong with the Dallas life, the big life, the Texas life, nothing wrong with big churches – God loves this, the capital “C” church, you know. And so long story short, prayed for about a year, and we said, we’re going to the Northeast.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Jeremy Baker — This is where my wife is originally from, the Connecticut region, this area, actually called a little town called North Haven. And we’re going to go back up here because there’s a group of people that need the Lord. And, you know, the Northeast, New Jersey, you know, New York, Maine, Vermont, Pennsylvania, these kind of, this region up here in this New England region is ah is an unchurched region.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jeremy Baker — There’s great people that are God-fearing people, great good Bible-believing churches, but there’s it’s not known as a Southern, you know, Christianity.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Jeremy Baker — Like everybody goes to church in the South, but up here, it’s a little different region. So we came up here. We didn’t know how to plant a church, honestly.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Jeremy Baker — I’m just giving you all the honest, the the real, real.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jeremy Baker — I wish I could tell you that I wrote the book on it and I know how to do everything perfectly.

Rich Birch — Love it

Jeremy Baker — But i could I could tell you every horror story what not to do, you know? So we we pulled out our life savings and we started a church and we had 70 people on our launch date.

Rich Birch — Wow.

And we put about $100,000 into our launch date thinking we would have…

Rich Birch — Wow.

Jeremy Baker — …you know, 800 people, a thousand people are going to show up. We put mailers in everybody’s mailbox. So long story short, we had 70 people.

Rich Birch — Wow, wow.

Jeremy Baker — And then out of that, we have just been going after our city. Out of that, we have just been reaching people, inviting people to God’s house, serving our community, clean days, outreaches, food ministry, backpack giveaways, Christmas, Thanksgiving. I mean, just every major holiday, we have just attacked our community. And this last week, we had over 2,400 people in attendance.

Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. Praise God.

Jeremy Baker — And and so in three and a half years, it’s just been wild. And there’s so much in that story I could tell you.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeremy Baker — But that’s kind of been from where we were, planning humble beginnings. God, what do you want to do? And it’s not about the size of a church, as you know, because I know there’s great churches out there that are ministering very well to the size that is in their community, and they’re doing a really good job shepherding people, caring for people.

Jeremy Baker — But it’s just, you know, I always believe, God, let me not mess this up. Lord, if I can steward this well, you’ll keep bringing them to me. And so we have a brand new team, new staff. I like to call us the the misfits of Toy Island, if I could use the if i could if i could use the Christmas kind of you know…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jeremy Baker — …thought process, you know. We don’t know what we’re doing, but we’re loving people well. We’re serving. We’re discipling to the best of our ability. We’re preaching the full gospel now. I don’t want people to think that we’re not preaching the gospel.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Jeremy Baker — We’re preaching from Genesis to Revelations, and we’re preaching the whole Bible, the whole council. And but that’s kind of that’s a little bit of kind of like how the beginning happened, but it’s been wild.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool.

Jeremy Baker — It’s been wild, man.

Rich Birch — Yeah. And I know, you know, we know that, well, all of our churches, you know, they they have the impact they do because God chooses to use what we’re doing at the end of the day. It’s got nothing to with us. It’s got everything to do with him.

Jeremy Baker — Right.

Rich Birch — But he is choosing to use something that you’re you’re doing. He’s clearly blessing something. He’s working through something. When you step back and think about the last couple of years, two or three years, What would be some of the things that you’ve seen him use that are like, hmm, this seems to be a part of the equation of what he’s pulling together.

Rich Birch — And that’s not from a like, hey, we want to replicate all this, but it’s like, hey, here’s here’s your story. This is what God seems to be using in your context to reach your people. What would be some of those things that bubble up to your mind?

Jeremy Baker — Yeah, great question. I would think the first thing for us is people want to be seen. People in the world that we live in today want to know that someone cares about them, that someone loves them.

Jeremy Baker — We like to say it around here. We have little cultural sayings. We see you. We hear you. We celebrate you. We see you, we hear you, we celebrate you. I love what Mary Kay said, the the makeup organization. She had a quote, and if I can quote her right, she said, everybody has an invisible sign around their neck that says, see me.

Jeremy Baker — And and I think it’s important. I think it’s real important that we see people the way God sees them. You know, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever would believe in him. So the whole thing is about seeing people the way God sees them, not seeing them through their lens of brokenness or through the lens of maybe a divorce or the pain or the regret or the shame. No, we got to see them through the grace and the mercy of God, through through what Jesus wants to do in their life. So we’re just loving people really well from the street, if I could say it like this, because I know it’s been said in church conferences, but from the street to the seat, we’re just loving people really well, you know, how to how to make people feel like they’re the big deal.

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Jeremy Baker — You know, that God does love them. So that would be probably one thing that I would say would kind of be our bread and butter of just loving people well…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jeremy Baker — …helping people find hope, especially in a season like this, you know, holiday season. It’s like, a you know, a lot of people are hopeless and we need to give hope to people. And so that would be a big thing.

Jeremy Baker — I say think the second thing I would say is taking people on the spiritual journey where they’re at. You know, I’ve been a ministry for 30 years. My dad’s a pastor. So I’ve been in church for a long time. And I think sometimes, you know, we can as as as church kids, or if I could say it that way, or church people, we are called the shepherd. We’re called to minister. We’re called the guide. But sometimes we want people to be on the road that we’re on. And and they don’t realize…

Rich Birch — That’s so true.

Jeremy Baker — …we have we have we have been on this journey for a long time. There’s been a lot of going to the mat, dealing with us, God doing a work in us. Like David said in Psalms 51, Lord, create me a clean heart. Help me help me grow, Lord, as a leader, as a mature, you know. Put away childish things. I, you know, I want to grow. So so we’re taking people on their journey. Okay, you’re new to faith, so we need to start you on this road or this path, if I could say, you know. Oh, you’ve been walking with God for three years. Okay, we’ve got to make sure that you know some of the foundations, some of the basics.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeremy Baker — You know I think that’s been some of our greatness of helping people stick, find community, be a part. So those are, I think those are two things. Understanding people need to be seen. And the second one is taking them on a journey of where they’re at, you know?

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I love that. The let’s let’s unpack that a little bit. I’d love to start with the loving people well thing – a little bit more detail.

Jeremy Baker — Yeah.

Rich Birch — When you say that, so what does that mean from the street to the seat? How are you how do you feel like, oh, this is something that Elevate Life’s doing well to love people as they’re coming, as they’re arriving, as they’re a part of what’s going on at the church?

Jeremy Baker — Yeah, so great. So for me, it’s going to be guest experience.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Jeremy Baker — What does it look like when people pull on your parking lot? You know, do we have parking lot – we don’t call them attendants. We call them parking lot banner wavers.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. Love it.

Jeremy Baker — They’re waving a banner, a blessing over your car. Now, it’s going to be a little charismatic a little bit. There’s going to be a little bit of a, you know, my background is, you know, is I’m I’m very very energetic, very enthusiastic…

Rich Birch — Sure.

Jeremy Baker — …passionate as a leader. So I want people to know it’s a big deal that you’re on property today.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeremy Baker — It’s a really big deal that you brought your family, that you showed up. You didn’t have to show up. You didn’t have to be here. You could have stayed home. You could have did what you wanted to do, but you gave God some time today. And so what we do is we we we we really pray that as the tires hit the parking lot, that miracles take place in people’s lives.

Jeremy Baker — Whatever that miracle might be, miracle of salvation. A miracle of of of a mindset change, a miracle of restoration. So banner wavers in the parking lot, loving on people.

Jeremy Baker — We have a team called the Impact Team that’s in the parking lot. They’re what we call our first time guest experience connection moments. So when they when there’s tents outside, of course, even in the winter, we got tents outside with heaters outside. You know, we just got four inches of snow the other day, but they’re still outside.

Jeremy Baker — So the commitment from our servant leaders is there. The commitment from our staff is there, just to make people seen and feel loved. So as they’re walking into the property, if they’re a first time guest, our team has been trained how to identify a first time people, even with the amount of people that are coming. And they’ll walk up to them and just say, so glad you’re here.

Jeremy Baker — Is this your first time? No, I’ve been here for about a month. OK, do you need anything? How can I serve you? How can we help you? Do you know how to check your kids in? Or, hey, can i can I walk you to your seat? I mean, we literally have a team over 100 plus people that are helping people walk into a building…

Rich Birch — Wow.

Jeremy Baker — …get a free get a get a cup of coffee, find them to their seat, make them feel loved. If they’re new, hey, let me take you on an experience tour is what we call it, an experience tour. You’re walking into a brand new building. You’ve never been into the building before. You know, lot of churches, it’s all love, but might not have the right signage of communication of where restrooms are, kids check-in nurseries, nursing mother’s room, you know, special needs, whatever. So we have these people that go and walk these people through this building. And, you know, we don’t have a large building. We’re we’re adding on to our building, but we’re about 28,000 square feet.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Jeremy Baker — And so even in that size, you know, you can get lost in a building that size…

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Jeremy Baker — …you you know, especially where there’s hallways and doorways you don’t know. And so we’re having people walk through. And then people walk up all the way to their seat.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Jeremy Baker — And then when they’re in their seat, we got people that are on the host team, which we’d call modern day ushers. We call them host team members. They just walking up to them. Hey, good to see you. How you doing? Good morning before service starts.

Rich Birch — I love that. Yes.

Jeremy Baker — So we’re creating this we’re creating this interaction culture. Now, if you’re introverted, I’ll be honest with you, it’s going to be hard. It’s going to be hard, man.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jeremy Baker — It’s going to be hard. If you’re more introverted in your personality and your style, you’re going to feel overloaded at a level, you know what I’m saying?

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jeremy Baker — So so that that’s some of the feedback we get.

Jeremy Baker — Like, hey, I love the church…

Rich Birch — It’s a little much.

Jeremy Baker — …but I got 18 people talking to me, man, before I even find a seat. And it’s like, I get it, I get it, I get it. But, you know, we just want you to feel seen and feel loved. So that’s part of what we do.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s very cool. I love that.

Jeremy Baker — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Super practical. That’s cool. And then I like this idea of talking to people where they’re at. I think that can be a concern we run into or a it’s like we’re not even aware that in our our churches we’re we’re we’re using language or or we’re assuming everyone’s at a certain place. What does that look like for you at Elevate Life? How are you helping? Because that’s a lot of people in a short period of time to both get to know and then also try to communicate in a way that actually connects with where they’re at. Talk us through what do you mean by that when you say we’re trying to talk to people where they’re at in their spiritual journey?

Jeremy Baker — Yeah, so if it so if you’re new, let me just give you context. This year alone, in 2025, we’ve had 3,919 first-time guests walk through our doors.

Rich Birch — That’s great.

Jeremy Baker — This year alone.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Jeremy Baker — So for us, we know as a new plant, as a new church, we’re going to have to really walk people through this spiritual journey. Some of these people maybe have some form of God, maybe they have been walking with God. Maybe they’ve been out of church since, you know, let’s just talk about pre, know, after or during COVID. Maybe they haven’t been back to God’s house because that’s really real in the Northeast.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Jeremy Baker — I mean, some people are just now coming back to church in the Northeast that have not been in church for the last four years. You know, it’s like, oh yeah, I’ve been out of church for about three and a half years and I’m just now getting back into the rhythm of getting back in my faith.

Jeremy Baker — So there’s so much I can talk about that. Like how how do we make our services flow? Like I always introduce introduce myself, hey, my name is Jeremy, and I have the privilege to pastor this church, and I just want to say welcome. If if this is your, you know, 52nd welcome this year or if this is your first welcome, I just want to say welcome.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jeremy Baker — Because i want I want them to know that we’re real, that we’re authentic, and we want to help them on their spiritual journey.

Rich Birch — It’s good.

Jeremy Baker — So we offer stuff like, you know, first-time, you know, decision, if you made a first time decision, let’s go, let’s go into, you know, who is Jesus? You know, what does Jesus, you know, want to do in your life? So there’s, there’s, there’s classes, there’s paths that we offer there.

Jeremy Baker — Grow track, you know, we have grow track that we offer every month. Hey, hey, won’t we want to teach you a little bit more about faith, who Elevate Life is, what, what our mission is, what our vision is, what, what the values of our church is. And so we walk them through that.

Jeremy Baker — And then, and then what we have is we have life groups. And these life groups are from all different walks. Deep dive of Revelation, deep studies of the Old Testament. Or, hey, we’re just going to go through the book of John. We’re just going to start in John 1 and learn what Jesus, you know, who Jesus is. And we’re to start there. Or if you’re more intellectual, we’re going to go a little bit deeper. You know, so we we we we we have these these life groups, we call them, because we’re Elevate Life. So we call them life groups. We want we want these groups to bring life to people.

Jeremy Baker — And and so ah so we just we we have people, we encourage them to sign up, to get involved. That’s our conversations always in the hallways. Hey, are you are you serving on a team? Are you in a life group? Here’s here’s why. The goal for me is not just gathering large crowds. The goal for me as as a shepherd, I would just say as ah as as the lead pastor now in this season of my life, is is to help people develop spiritually…

Rich Birch — Yeah, so good. Yeah, definitely.

Jeremy Baker — …to help people find their personal walk with God, not just come and hear a good word. You know, motivating, it’s inspiring, it’s it’s helpful. Yes, it’s practical. I’ve got handles I can live my life by throughout the week. But my my heart is, don’t just take a Sunday and give it to God, but give God every day of your life.

Rich Birch — So good.

Jeremy Baker — You know, sometimes we just turn the surrender switch on on Sunday, not realizing the surrender switch needs to be on every day of the week.

Rich Birch — Amen. So true.

Jeremy Baker — So I’ve got to turn that surrender switch on every day. And just like you a natural thought when you turn the light switch on when you’re in the room, you turn it off when you leave the room. Well, a lot of people look at church that way. I’m going to turn my surrender switch on today. It’s Sunday. I’m going to go to God’s house. And then on when they leave Sunday, they leave away the property. They pull away. The surrender switch turns off. And I think that’s where the consumer mindset, especially in the Western part of the country…

Rich Birch — Sure.

Jeremy Baker — …you know, we have gotten, you know, we’re, we’re inundated with consumerism.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jeremy Baker — And so, and so how, do how do we help people really become disciples of of Christ? So the second part of our mission statement is making disciples that follow Jesus. So the goal is making heaven more crowded, but making disciples that follow Jesus.

Rich Birch — So good. That’s great. Let’s talk about a bit like up the funnel a little bit, like at the top end, where, how are people learning about Elevate Life? You talked about when you launched, you did a bunch of marketing stuff. Has that continued to happen? Is this just like, you’re really good at Facebook ads? Help me understand. What does that look like? How, why is the church growing?

Jeremy Baker — Yeah, great question. I personally, I will never do an ad in a mailbox again. That was $25,000 that I think one person showed up, and then we had a bunch of them ripped up and mailed back to us and told us to never mail them and again. It’s the funniest story.

Rich Birch — Wow. Yes.

Jeremy Baker — Yeah, so it’s it’s all good. It’s it’s it’s this is not the South. I’m a Texas guy, and I’m living in the New England region, and it’s it’s night and day, you know.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.

Jeremy Baker — So what we have done really well at, I believe, causes some of the growth to happen is two things, is every week we’re encouraging people to invite somebody. That is a part of our culture. Invite culture. Who you bringing? Who do you know that’s far from God that needs the Lord right now? Who do you know that’s far from Him that you know that that you could bring?

Jeremy Baker — So then the second thing is we’re doing really good social media ads. We’re spending about $1,500 a month on social media ads. And our team has done a phenomenal job. And all my team is 19, 20, 21, and 22-year-old young men and women that are running all of my social media.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.

Jeremy Baker — I’m 50. I want to act like I’m current. But I’m not. You know, there’s things I don’t, I’m not adverse in. There’s things that are constantly changing with technology.

Rich Birch — Sure. Yeah, sure.

Jeremy Baker — And and and I just got to trust this younger generation.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Jeremy Baker — And they have done a phenomenal job.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Jeremy Baker — That’s been one of our huge success for us to put us on the map in this region, to put us, make us aware.

Rich Birch — Let’s pull it, but pull apart both of those. When you say you’re encouraging people every week, so you’re like ringing the bell that I want to hear churches to hear more of. You’re inviting people every week to invite their friends. Give us a sense. What does that look like? How are you doing that every single week? What’s that look like?

Jeremy Baker — Yeah, so part of that is in our services. It’s in language.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Jeremy Baker — You know, we always say, you know thank you for being here this morning. We pray that you have brought somebody with you. And then at the end of our service, we’re saying, hey, don’t forget to invite somebody back next week. So we’re always saying that in our language. So it’s become part of our our culture. It’s become part of of who we are as a church. We are a bringer church. We are an inviting church. We are a reach the lost church. We are the great commission. Because the goal for us is not just giving information, but we’re hoping that the people will receive the information that causes some type of revelation in their own spirit that leads them to the Great Commission.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Jeremy Baker — Because we want them to be a part of what Jesus said. He you know he said in in Matthew 10, he goes, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. You know. Pray to the Lord of the harvest that he would send more laborers. So we are we are Ephesians 4, equipping the church to do the work of the ministry. We are we have to encourage people to build the local community of the church, the local house of God.

And so that’s part of our language in our hallways. We have really practical things. We have invite card stands everywhere. Invite card stands everywhere. So simple. We have QR codes. You can scan. You can download all kinds of invite information.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Jeremy Baker — You can invite our service times. So really practical steps like that have really helped us. And then in our life groups, it’s in it’s being said. In our midweek services, it’s being said. We do eight services a week. So that’s what we’re doing right now, eight services a week. And and and so in every service, it’s just been indoctrinated.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jeremy Baker — It’s been just repetition, you know, over and over and over.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Jeremy Baker — And then And I think that’s a big part of why God’s allowed us to… Honestly, I don’t know church any other way.

Rich Birch — Right. Sure.

Jeremy Baker — I personally don’t know church any other way. I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Rich Birch — I don’t know about that.

Jeremy Baker — I’m just I know I’m just appreciate the love. I mean I I’m a guy who barely graduated from seminary. I barely graduated, you know. I was like everybody looked at me, all the professors, like, oh, man. I hope you make it. You know, it’s like, it’s like one of those guys, it’s like, I just, I just love people well. And I want people to know Jesus. I mean, Jesus changed my life. I mean, he changed my life. He, he did something in me that no one ever has ever done or no one could ever do. And my life is I’m indebted to him.

Jeremy Baker — I’m I’m living my whole life for him. That’s why 30 years of working through whatever I’ve got to work through in ministry and working through stuff as a as a young man, now as an older man. I’ve just stayed the course, stayed faithful. Not perfect, but stayed faithful, step moving forward every season of my life. And so I just love people well, and I think people hear the heart of that through our pastoral team, through our elders.

Rich Birch — Sure.

Jeremy Baker — They hear the heart of loving people well, that we want people to find Christ. So that’s the language I think helped us in this last season, you know, really in this last season, really grow. A year ago, a year ago, this time, we only ran, not not only, it’s great, but we were around about 900 people a year ago.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s crazy.

Jeremy Baker — And then it’s last year, we’ve exploded.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Jeremy Baker — We’ve doubled our church.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Jeremy Baker — I mean, we’ve doubled. I mean, we we we have no more parking. I mean, we we we have 345 parking spots. And then two out of the five weekend experiences, because we do other services throughout the week, two out of the five weekend experiences, we have to turn people away, which just breaks my heart as a pastor because it’s like…

Rich Birch — Right. Yeah. Yes.

Jeremy Baker — …we can’t build fast enough. We’re looking for bigger venues. Again, I could go on that, but we want to make more room. We want people to find hope. It was never about being big. I told a pastor locally, I said, and he was he was coming here to, you know, just to encourage us to keep going, which was very kind of him. But I said, pastor, it was never about being big. It’s always been about reaching the lost.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s great.

Jeremy Baker — It’s always been about reaching the lost.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Jeremy Baker — So I don’t know if that makes any sense.

Rich Birch — It does. It does. There’s a lot there that you, that I, you know, I, I, I didn’t want to interrupt because there’s so much packed in there that I think was so helpful for people. And, you know, that singular focus on, Hey, we’re trying to reach people. I want to come back to that in um in a minute. I want you to kind of speak to, leaders on that.

Rich Birch — But I want to underline one of the, it’s a simple thing that um we miss in too many churches. And I’ve done a bunch of study on invite culture and you’re doing classically, you’re doing the best behavior classically. You’ve got to keep invite in front of people. We can’t, you can’t let up the gas pedal on that one. You’ve got to keep that in front of people, make it super practical, give them tools, all that like invite card stuff, all of that super important.

Rich Birch — Years ago, I was talking to a lead pastor of a church that was growing very rapidly. And this wasn’t on a podcast. We were talking sidebar and I was like, Hey, asked a very similar question. What’s God using? And he’s like, Oh, it’s a little embarrassing. I don’t want to say it. And I’m like, no, no, tell me, what do you think he’s using? And he said, well, every weekend for this last year, We put invite cards on every single chair in every auditorium for the entire year. And we told people, take those and invite people. And he’s like, I really think that that is like just the intensity…

Jeremy Baker — That’s it.

Rich Birch — …of we’re keeping it in front of people. We can’t let up. So I want to I want to encourage you and that and listeners.

Jeremy Baker — Thank you.

Rich Birch — Hey, friends, that is that is a key part of this. Talk to us about the the focus on reaching the lost or reaching people who are far from God or unchurched people. Talk talk us through that.

Rich Birch — Because what what’s happening at your church, I know we’ve kind of we’ve referenced this a few times, is super unique in in, you know, New England. What would be some of the challenges that you’re facing to keeping that singular focus of reaching unchurched people, people far from God? What’s been the challenge there and how are you having to adjust and kind of keep your culture focused on that as you continue to grow?

Jeremy Baker — Such a great question. I mean, such a great question. I would, man, you’re such a great question asker, if I could say it that way.

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s nice. Thank you.

Jeremy Baker — Yeah I mean, a great question.

Rich Birch — Sure.

Jeremy Baker — I would think for me, for me, I got into ministry so that people’s lives could be changed by the good news. There’s no other way there’s no other reason why I’m in ministry. I’m here because I want people’s lives to be changed the way my life has been changed. So the the thing I’m always projecting from the the the the platform that I get to walk in, the the place that I get to stand, is it’s got to be about people. That’s why Christ came. He came and he and he died on a cross so that people would find eternal life, so that people would find hope.

Jeremy Baker — And so we’re always pushing that agenda from the front. And, you know, whatever said from the platform stage, whatever you want to, however you want to articulate it, is is is is being pushed for a reason, I believe. So we’re constantly pushing this from the stage. We’ve got to reach people. People are dying and going to hell every day. And this is where I think the church sometimes trips. We got enough people now. So now let’s get let’s let’s stop making it about people and let’s start making it about preferences.

Rich Birch — Come on.

Jeremy Baker — And I think that’s the danger that’s the danger where guys like me can, you know, I was just having an elder meeting a few days ago, and I andI was telling our elders, because now we’ve got to implement some other pathways of discipleship, some other handles to help people grow and mature faster. And I said, you can’t push maturity. Maturity takes time.

Jeremy Baker — If we’re not careful, we’ll we’ll lose the vision of what got us here. And then what happens is we’ll become inward focus rather than outward focus. said, I’ve seen it, guys. And I was talking to my elders. and I was just opening up my heart to them. I said, I’ve seen us do this. I’ve been a part of big churches where now it’s about the building. It’s about the butts.

Rich Birch — So true.

Jeremy Baker — It’s about the budgets. It’s about, you know, I’ve seen that. And I’m like, let us never lose the very thing that God’s allowed us to be a part of in in this season.

Rich Birch — Yep, so true.

Jeremy Baker — I never woke up one day and said, hey, let’s go and have one the fastest growing churches in America in the New England region. I woke up one day said, God, I’m comfortable. And I don’t want to be comfortable anymore.

Rich Birch — So good.

Jeremy Baker — I want you to use my life for the rest of my life until I see you to bring an impact in this region, whatever region that you send me. He sent us to the Northeast.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Jeremy Baker — He sent us back home to where my wife was from. And so that’s our prayer. And I want to keep the main thing the main thing. I don’t want to drift because there is a difference between, there is a difference between preferences and then and then purpose, you know. The purpose of Elevate is to make heaven more crowded. The purpose of Elevate is to make disciples that follow Jesus. The purpose is to reach our community, to make an impact. But but if you’re not careful, you’ll you’ll get you’ll get satisfied with the people. You’ll settle. You’ll get complacent. We got enough people now.

Jeremy Baker — But what if but what if God really wants to change? What if God, this is my question I’ve been wrestling with, and maybe maybe you have answers for me, but I’ve been wrestling with this question in my own spirit. Like, is it possible that one church could really change a community? Is it possible that one church could, God could use a church, a group of people. Not not I’m not talking I’m not talking about domination. I’m talking about just a group of people that are passionate about making heaven more crowded, that God could use a group of people that would change the facet of a community.

Rich Birch — So good.

Jeremy Baker — You know? That would that that that’s the that’s the thing I’ve been wrestling with. Can God use Elevate Life in this region? What if God wants to use us to help Yale? What if God wants us to use us to, you know, to to to get on college campuses and see a revival, you know, at Yale University?

Rich Birch — So good.

Jeremy Baker — You know, and I mean, that’s an Ivy League school.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jeremy Baker — I mean, people from all over the world go to that school. And we haven’t even, I feel like, scratched the surface. So that’s part of my my always, I got to keep the main thing the main thing. It’s got to be about people. So one of our values is, people is our pursuit. That’s what we’re, we’re pursuing people.

Rich Birch — That’s so good.

Jeremy Baker — And not programs, not not preferences. I got preferences. I mean, I’m sure we all got preferences.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jeremy Baker — But I’m putting down my preference so that I can carry the purpose of the good news. I hope that makes sense.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Makes total sense. And yeah, super encouraging. And yeah, I think I think God’s placed your church in a, you know, every community across the country is an important place. There’s people all over the world that need Jesus, obviously, but I i don’t think you’re, I think it doesn’t, it’s not surprising to me that the Northeast is a place that is, some call it a spiritually dead or spiritually dry part of the country, while at the same time, it is of global significance in a lot of different ways. Like the the communities that you’re serving are are different than other parts of the kind country from an influence point of view. You place like Yale, it’s not just another university.

Jeremy Baker — Yeah.

Rich Birch — You know. And so I think God’s placed you there for a real specific reason, which I think is you know, super encouraging. Well, this has been a a great conversation, Jeremy. I just want to encourage you, thankful that you would come on today and help us kind of peek behind the curtain a little bit. As we land today’s episode, any kind of final words you give to church leaders that are listening in to today’s conversation?

Jeremy Baker — You know, the only thing I would encourage church leaders is my my my thing I always tell pastors and and people that I am connected with always is just make it about people. Make it about people. And I’ll say it this way. It’s not problems to be solved. It’s people to be pastored. It’s not problems to be solved. It’s people to be pastored. Sometimes pastors, and I get it because I’m talking to myself, sometimes we make people the problem, and the people are not the problem. The people are the purpose of why we do the pastoring. That’s why we do what we do. That’s why we do shepherding.

Jeremy Baker — So, you know, when you’re dealing with when you’re dealing with people, it’s messy. It can be hurtful. There’s there’s different things that come with that, and we could list a thousand things in that. But I would just say, just love people well to the best of your ability. Give them grace. Give them mercy.

Jeremy Baker — If they leave your church and they go somewhere else, just let them know the key under the mat. We’re on the same team. We’re part of the same family. We’re all going to go to heaven to we know one day. It’s not about who’s got the bigger church or who’s better? Who’s got the better kids program or who’s got ah the more youth? It’s not about any of that. It’s about just trusting God with what he’s given us stewardship over and in stewarding that really well and just loving the people that God brings.

Rich Birch — Yeah, so good. Pastor Jeremy, appreciate you being on today.

Jeremy Baker — Thank you.

Rich Birch — If people want to track with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online to connect with you guys and kind of follow your story a little bit? I would encourage people to follow your Instagram. So where can we find that and your website and all that?

Jeremy Baker — Yeah, so our website is elevatelifect.com, elevatelifect.com, and that would be the same for our Instagram. And so thank you so much for having me. ‘m very grateful, and thank you for your time.

Rich Birch — Thanks so much. Take care.

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re wrapping up our conversations with executive pastors from prevailing churches to unpack what leaders like you shared in the National Executive Pastor Survey.

Today we’re joined by Shayla McCormick, executive leader at Coastal Community Church in Florida. Coastal is a rapidly growing multisite church with three locations, consistently ranking among the fastest-growing churches in the country. Shayla serves alongside her husband and brings deep operational insight shaped by leading a large church with a remarkably lean staff.

In this conversation, Shayla helps unpack one of the most pressing themes from the survey: how churches hire—and why so many find themselves hiring the same roles over and over again. She challenges leaders to rethink staffing through the lens of multiplication rather than pressure relief.

To learn more about Coastal Community Church, visit coastalcommunity.tv or follow @coastalchurch on Instagram. You can also connect with Shayla at @shaylamccormick.

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: TouchPoint

As your church reaches more people, one of the biggest challenges is making sure no one slips through the cracks along the way.

TouchPoint Church Management Software is an all-in-one ecosystem built for churches that want to elevate discipleship by providing clear data, strong engagement tools, and dependable workflows that scale as you grow.

TouchPoint is trusted by some of the fastest-growing and largest churches in the country because it helps teams stay aligned, understand who they’re reaching, and make confident ministry decisions week after week.

If you’ve been wondering whether your current system can carry your next season of growth, it may be time to explore what TouchPoint can do for you. You can evaluate TouchPoint during a free, no-pressure one-hour demo at TouchPointSoftware.com/demo.

Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. We are in the middle of these special episodes—I’ve been loving these—around really responding to your survey. We did a National Executive Pastor Survey. It’s the largest survey I can say that I’m aware of, of this, where we get out and talk to executive pastors across the country and really ask them, how’s it going in their church? What are they feeling? What are they learning? To really take a litmus test of where things are at.

Rich Birch — And then what we’re doing is pulling in some incredible… leaders to help you wrestle through with some of the findings. And I’m excited, privileged, really, to have Shayla McCormick with us today. She’s with an incredible church called Coastal Community Church, a multi-site church with, if I’m counting correctly, three locations in Florida. It started in September 2009, not that long ago, and they’ve repeatedly been one of the fastest growing churches in the country. She serves with her husband at this church, and this is an incredible church. You should be following along with Shayla and with the church. Welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.

Shayla McCormick — Thank you so much, Rich. I’m glad to be back and excited just to, you know, share with everybody just some insights and things that that I’ve learned along the way too.

Rich Birch — Nice. This is yeah super fun to have you on again. And you should go back and listen to back episode that Shayla was on was one of our best of last year. Super helpful. So you’re going to want to lean in on that.

Rich Birch — Now, when I saw some of the results from the survey, friends, I’m letting you behind the curtain. We looked at a couple different you know things and I sent them out to these friends and I said, hey, you pick whichever one you want. And I was really hoping that you would pick this one because I really think that you’ve got just so much to offer to this. So let’s, I’m going to unpack this a little bit.

Shayla McCormick — Yeah.

Rich Birch — So one of the questions we asked was, ah you know, there’s all these different roles that people are hiring. And for years, in fact, I actually thought about maybe not doing this question this year, because basically the order is pretty similar that people come back every year. But what we’ve seen from 2023 to 2024 is that particularly support roles, this idea of support roles that churches are out looking for those has grown significantly, 12 percentage points in those three years. Other roles like NextGen remain consistently at the top. You know, Outreach ranks the lowest at like 9 to 12 percent, which breaks my heart as a former outreach pastor. I was like, ah, people are not thinking about those things.

Rich Birch — So today what I want to do is unpack this idea around what are who are we hiring for? What difference does it make? We know as an executive pastor listening in, I know that many of you are are kicking off this year thinking about, hmm, who should we be hiring? What should that look like? And really this tension that we all face with you know, being understaffed and overstaffed. How does all that work together? So I’m really looking forward to having your input on it.

Rich Birch — Why do you think churches continue to hire for essentially the same roles as we see year in, year out, Shayla, why do we see that? Even as ministry changes, it’s like we find ourselves having the same conversation. Where are the kids ministry people? Where are the support roles people?

Shayla McCormick — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Why do we find ourselves in these same conversations?

Shayla McCormick — Yeah, honestly, I think a lot of times as church leaders, like we repeat roles because we haven’t we haven’t really honestly just kind of stopped long enough to really go, what does this season actually require?

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Shayla McCormick — I think a lot of times what we do is we hire to almost relieve pressure but not really build capacity. And so I think we repeat roles because like kids ministry, right? That’s always a place where you have growth, you have kids, you have to staff a lot of volunteers. It’s a lot of administrative work. And, you know, sometimes I think we can tend to go, Hey, I want to relieve pressure on this. And so we end up trying to to put somebody in a seat and then we end up over hiring. And a lot of, a lot of us hire when it hurts, right? When, okay, attendance is growing, volunteers are tired, systems are breaking, A leader is overwhelmed.

Shayla McCormick — And we end up, I think, making these desperation hires rather than hiring to actually build capacity…

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

Shayla McCormick — …so that we can continue to grow. And so I think a lot of times our mindset kind of subtly shifts from, I mean, Ephesians 4, right? You equip the saints for the work of the ministry. And it sometimes our mindset shifts from equipping the saints to to almost replacing the staff role or the saints role with a staff member.

Shayla McCormick — And it can tend to just, you can be overstaffed. And then that puts pressure financially and all, you know, like so much, but we just continue to repeat the process. Because again, we hired to relieve pressure instead of build capacity and we’re not really sitting…

Rich Birch — Yeah, I would love to unpack that.

Shayla McCormick — Yeah.

Rich Birch — I think there’s so much there. So how are you discerning or how, you know, if a church calls you up and is asking you discern really between those two, like, Hey, I’ve got maybe I’ve got an operational problem. I’m trying to relieve pressure using the language you do. You were saying versus like building capacity for the future, which inherently sounds like to me, if I’m choosing to build capacity, I’m going to live with some pain in the short term is what I hear in that. Help me discern what that, what that looks like. How how do you work that out at, you know, at, at Coastal?

Shayla McCormick — Yeah, I think we we are always looking for equippers, for multipliers. We ask the question very consistently, is this a doer or is this a leader? And not that doers are bad. Doers can actually, they can help you add capacity because it relieves the stress or the pain on a leader, right? Because you have somebody doing stuff, but equipers actually, they multiply. And so when I’m a growing church, if I continue to hire doers, then I’m just like, I’m solving a temporary so solution essentially, or a temporary problem, because at some point those things are going to go away.

Rich Birch — Right.

Shayla McCormick — But what, what the approach that we’ve taken is the Ephesians 4, you know, you equip the saints for the work of the ministries. And I think a lot of, lot of the times we actually neglect almost our volunteer base. And we lean heavily on our volunteers, our, We average probably 5,000 in weekend attendance, and we have about 25 staff members. And that is not a lot of staff for…

Rich Birch — That’s insane. That to me, that is… Friends, I hope you heard that. So that’s like one to 200 or something like that. It’s it’s that’s all it’s

Shayla McCormick — I don’t even know. It’s low.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s very low. It’s very low. Yes.

Shayla McCormick — But we have a very, very, very high value in equipping our volunteers. Because there are people in our church that want to, they want to do.

Rich Birch — Right.

Shayla McCormick — They might be the doers that can help build capacity in a way that can help lift responsibility off people. We have people that come in that like, they’re like on staff, but they don’t get paid just because they want to come and they want to serve.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Shayla McCormick — And a lot of times I think we actually, say no for people because, oh, I don’t want to ask somebody to do another thing. But they’re like begging, use my gifts, use my talents. But we’re saying no for them. And then we’re going and hiring for these positions when it’s something that we could actually give away…

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Shayla McCormick — …and equip the saints for the work of the ministry.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Shayla McCormick — And for instance, in our kids’ ministry, we average at one of our locations probably about between 500 and 600 kids on the weekend. And I have one full-time staff member for that position right now.

Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. Yeah.

Shayla McCormick — And now we are getting ready to hire an additional person. But she has done a phenomenal job at building high-capacity leaders that are volunteers…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Shayla McCormick — …that want to give their time and their energy and their resources and their passion. But I think for so many churches, we just we say no for people…

Rich Birch — Yeah, 100%.

Shayla McCormick — …and then we end up hiring something that we could give away in a volunteer capacity. Now that is harder on us…

Rich Birch — Right.

Shayla McCormick — …because you have to you know you have to teach and equip and you know pick things up, but…

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s it’s longer term. It’s it’s not it’s not a quick and easy.

Shayla McCormick — Right.

Rich Birch — So I want to come back to the big ask in a second.

Shayla McCormick — Okay.

Rich Birch — But I want I want to play a bit of the devil’s advocate.

Shayla McCormick — Yes.

Rich Birch — So I was having this conversation with a church leader recently, and we were looking at their staff, like their just total staffing. And we were actually having this conversation between, I was asking them like, hey, what how many of these people would you say are Ephesians 4 type people, equippers, people who are…

Shayla McCormick — Yeah.

Rich Birch — And then how many of these would be doers? Because every staff team has some doers on it. Like you have some percentage of them.

Shayla McCormick — Yes, 100%.

Rich Birch — When you, shooting from the hip of those 25, what do you think your ratio is on your team of equippers to doers? Because this is what this leader said to me. They were like, because I was kind of pushing them. I was like, I think you need to have less of these doers on your team. Like we’ve got to, we got to get not, I said, we’d have to get rid of them, but we got to grow some of these leaders up to become more multipliers.

Shayla McCormick — Yep.

Rich Birch — And they were like, well, but those people, they release my multiplying type people to do the work that they need to do. And I was like, yes, but if we don’t watch this ratio very quickly, we’ll we’ll end up with a bunch of doers on our team. So what would the ratio look like for you on your team? How do you think about those issues? Unpack that for me.

Shayla McCormick — Yeah, I would I would say it’s maybe like a, I would say it’s maybe 10% that are, that are…

Rich Birch — Right. Wow. Yeah. A couple, two or three, maybe four at the most kind of thing.

Shayla McCormick — Yes, exactly, that are that are not the ones that I’m expecting. And even even them, I expect to go out and multiply as well. It’s it’s it’s part of our part of our conversations.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Shayla McCormick — But it’s a very low percentage because for me, it again, it goes back to, those are things that I can equip other people to do…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Shayla McCormick — …that I can give ministry away. And…

Rich Birch — Okay. So yeah, let’s talk about the big ask.

Shayla McCormick — Okay.

Rich Birch — So I hear this all the time from church leaders across the country and they’ll this is, this is how the conversation goes. They’re like, yeah, yeah. But you don’t know, like people in our part of the country, they’re very busy.

Shayla McCormick — Yeah.

Rich Birch — And like the people at our church, they’re kind of like a big deal. And like, they got a lot going on in their life. And like, This is true. You guys are in like the greater Fort Lauderdale area. This is a very, you are not like some backwoods, you know, place and you’re doing the big ask.

Rich Birch — You’re saying, hey, you used it, which is you said like, hey, basically we’re saying, could you work part time for us in this area?

Shayla McCormick — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Have a huge amount of responsibility. How do you keep the big ask in front of people? How, how what’s that look like? Unpack that for us.

Shayla McCormick — I mean, something that we talk about on our staff very frequently is, because it’s so natural to say, oh, they’re too busy, especially high capacity people. What I’ve what I’ve realized is is just a side note, but like, single moms are the most high-capacity people. They are the busiest people juggling the most things. But there are best people to come in and serve and do and all of that.

Rich Birch — Right.

Shayla McCormick — But they’re busy.

Rich Birch — Right.

Shayla McCormick — And so just because someone seems busy or successful or, you know, whatever barrier that you put in your brain, like, I think the reality is is we say no for them before we even ask.

Rich Birch — 100%. 100%.

Shayla McCormick — And so the conversations on our team always look like, are you saying no for them? Make the ask anyways. And a lot of times they’re like, oh my gosh, they said yes. I mean, I have people that run million, billion dollar companies serving in my parking team. You know, it’s like…

Rich Birch — Right.

Shayla McCormick — It’s, yeah, I mean, I you have people that are retired, very successful, business leaders that are coming in and volunteering to you know do finance things. Like it’s finding what are what are they great at and giving them purpose in it.

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Shayla McCormick — And not just saying no for them because I think they’re successful or they’re too busy.

Rich Birch — How much of that is, because I would totally agree, how much of that is like, like what I hear you saying, it’s like a mindset issue for us as leaders.

Shayla McCormick — Yes.

Rich Birch — Like, hey, we can’t, even when we ask someone, we can say no before them in that question, right? We can be like, I don’t know if you could, well, you know, you’re real busy and I’m not sure blah blah, blah. And that kind of lets them off the hook before we even. So part of it is a mindset, but then part of it has to be like a structural thing, the way you’re structuring the roles. How do those two interact with each other?

Shayla McCormick — Ask the question one more time.

Rich Birch — So part of it is like our mindset are the, the, when we approach people, we’re asking them in a way that, you know, is casting vision for like, Hey, this is a huge opportunity to push the kingdom forward. But then also a part of it, I would assume is like the way we’re structuring the roles so that it it feels like, no, like we’re, we’re kind of, it is a big ask. Like, it’s like, we’re giving them enough responsibility and all that sort of thing. How do those interact with each other when you’re asking someone, when you’re making a big ask like that?

Shayla McCormick — I mean, I think most of what I’m talking, what I’m referring to is a little bit more in the the doer space or the operational space.

Rich Birch — Yep. Yep. Okay, good. Yep.

Shayla McCormick — So it’s structuring things based on almost task or, you know, responsibility that can be repeated consistently and come in and just, you know, like get it done, so that I don’t have to, again, go back to hiring somebody to do these tasks to take this off of this staff member’s plate to increase their capacity. I’m basically giving those tasks and responsibilities to a volunteer. And I think a lot of times what’s scary to me is people, us, you know, churches, their first response to problem in every situation is to hire.

Rich Birch — Yeah, right.

Shayla McCormick — And I think if that’s your first response, you’re going to get in, trouble you’re going to get in big trouble.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.

Shayla McCormick — And you’re going end up overstaffed because you, you staffed in seasons where attendance was growing or something again, to relieve that pressure…

Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah, that’s good.

Shayla McCormick — …not thinking multiplication. And if every solution is to hire, I don’t think the church has a staffing problem. actually think they probably have a discipleship problem. And like…

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

Shayla McCormick — …and an equipping problem because the goal is to multiply apply leaders faster so that your church grows.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that’s good.

Shayla McCormick — And so if we’re not thinking multiplication and equipping, then you know I think we’re gonna get to a place where, again, we’re we’re overstaffing and we’re hiring for the same things because we haven’t learned to equip and empower and train up.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Let’s double click on that.

Shayla McCormick — Yeah.

Rich Birch — What risks? So overstaffing, why is that a risk? What’s the there’s obviously a financial risk there. Are there other risks that you see there that emerge when a church consistently staffs for doers or execution rather than you know invest in you know equipping and raising up the people in their church? What will be some other risks you see in that?

Shayla McCormick — Yeah, I think if you’re, if you, I’m trying to figure out how to frame this. If you’re not thinking multiplication, you’re going to, you’re going to hit a point in your church where like everything isn’t always up and to the right.

Rich Birch — Right. Yes. True.

Shayla McCormick — And so it’s not that I’m planning for failure or the difficulty, but I’m also trying to steward what has been entrusted to me, and some of that requires foresight and wisdom…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Shayla McCormick — …even in my planning and my budgeting. And so if one season I’m staffing something in growth, the next season might not look the same. And I’ve because I haven’t diligently given, again, Ephesians 4, given ministry away, my role, pastor’s roles, you know, like, is to equip the saints for the work of the ministry.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Shayla McCormick — And if I haven’t done those things properly, then I think I’m going to get a hit a season where then I’m letting staff go.

Rich Birch — Right.

Shayla McCormick — And, you know, or honestly, culture has become lazy because everybody doesn’t have enough to to do. And so there’s tensions and frustrations and, you know, like, and it starts you start to get a culture, I think, where you say, well, we’ll just hire for that. We’ll just hire for that. We’ll just hire for that. Instead of, okay, who’s next? Are you always developing? Like, what volunteer have you asked to do that? Have you given ministry away? And start asking our staff questions. If they’re coming to you and saying, hey, i need ah I need this role and I need this role and I need this role, the question back should be, well, who have you been developing?

Rich Birch — Right.

Shayla McCormick — You know, what ministry have you given away? Some of those things that just kind of push back on the solution is not always to hire somebody.

Rich Birch — Right.

Shayla McCormick — But what responsibility have you taken in development of people?

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. in the In the kids ministry area, you had referenced this earlier, you know, a campus with 500 kids and one staff, which again is is, I know there’s lots of executive pastors that are listening in that are like, what? That’s crazy. But you are, ah you have decided to add a staff member there. What was it that kind of clicked over to say, okay, yeah, we are going to add someone. And and what are what is that role that you’re adding? And how do you continue to ensure that we’re, you know, that we keep this focus as we look to the future?

Shayla McCormick — For us, my kid’s pastor is obviously very high capacity, you know, and she is a multiplier. And her greatest use of her time for me is connecting with those families, is creating opportunities for them to connect, and hiring another person is going to free her up to connect more with families on the weekends, and to spend more of her time being strategic.

Shayla McCormick — And so she needs to duplicate another her on the weekends that can make sure they’re facilitating volunteers and they’re making sure people are encouraged and that teams are built and that people are showing up and schedules are being done. And it’s it’s high people, but it’s also task and responsibility that comes off of her plate that frees her up to um do the thing that she’s great at.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s fantastic.

Shayla McCormick — And obviously, she’s given all that stuff away in this season, but now we’re also using that as a developmental role to potentially be a kids director at another location when we launch a location.

Rich Birch — Right. Yeah. There will be more, hopefully more coastal locations in the future…

Shayla McCormick — Yes.

Rich Birch — …and you need to you know raise those people up now you have the ability to do that. This is one way, you know, to do that as well.

Shayla McCormick — Yep. Yep. Right.

Rich Birch — So put yourself in a, a, say a friend calls executive pastor calls and they’re in this kind of this topic. They feel like, man, my team is perpetually stretched.

Rich Birch — We, we added a bunch of staff last year and, it just didn’t help. You know, it’s like we find it sure we’re starting out the new year here and our headcount is up, but people are as tired. They’re as burnt out as they’ve ever been. And it feels disproportionate. It feels like, oh, man, like I don’t this things are not getting better. What are they missing? What what are what’s the how would you coach them? Maybe some first steps that you would kind of help them to think about what they should be doing on this front.

Shayla McCormick — So I think maybe first and foremost, I might ask what what work are you doing that really God never asked you to do, first of all? I think we, we, add a lot of things that aren’t probably the best use of people’s times. And so where have we added things that we didn’t need to add that aren’t adding value…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Shayla McCormick — …that can, number one, lift something off of our team that maybe they don’t just, you know, doesn’t add value.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Shayla McCormick — And so that would probably be one of the first places I would start. It was like what are what are you working on that God hasn’t asked you to do?

Rich Birch — Yeah, what can we streamline? What do we need to pull back? Yeah, yeah.

Shayla McCormick — Exactly. And then…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Shayla McCormick — …secondarily, I think I would really focus on leaning into, and this is what we’ve done in in many seasons, is we’ve leaned into two things. Number one is starting to ask our team, like, hey, who’s who’s around you that you’re developing? I need you to pick three people, you know, and just start pouring into them. I know this this isn’t a, I know this doesn’t lift the load, necessarily in the moment, but I think it can help lift it for the future. So it’s like, hey, how am I teaching my staff to look for other leaders and developing those leaders? And the other question just went away from my mind.

Rich Birch — Well, that’s a great one, though. This even it’s the idea of who are the two or three people that you’re developing, that’s a powerful idea. Because I think there’s think particularly if you’re a church that’s caught in this treadmill, um there probably are people in your orbit. There are there are volunteers that would be looking for more to do to look. But but oftentimes our team, we just they don’t see those people. They don’t because we haven’t challenged them to see those people.

Shayla McCormick — It’s it’s it’s honestly a question that’s a regular part of all of our teams one-on-ones…

Rich Birch — That’s cool.

Shayla McCormick — …that one of the questions is, who’s next? Like you should always be replacing yourself.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Who’s next? Yeah, that’s good.

Shayla McCormick — And that is just a continual pipeline of people and it’s teaching them to see other people and develop people. And they know that when I come to this meeting with my leader, I need to be telling them what I did, who I’m investing in, you know, what that looks like. So that there’s like a pipeline of leadership.

Shayla McCormick — And I even, like with with my own assistant, I’ll say this, she’s like, Shayla, how do I do that? It’s like I’m, she’s right, a doer, you know, she’s my assistant. But I said, honestly, the the way that there’s so much that you can give away, you can build volunteer teams to execute gift baskets when a, you know…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Shayla McCormick — Like there are things that we just have to teach people to start giving away…

Rich Birch — Right.

Shayla McCormick — …and equipping other people to do.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good.

Shayla McCormick — And I think it’s why I don’t I don’t use like being a large church with a small staff as like a bragging thing because I I don’t think that that’s necessarily healthy long term.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Shayla McCormick — But I think that it’s very strategic in how we have built a volunteer culture that is very high capacity and shows up and gets it done because we simply just haven’t said no…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Shayla McCormick — …and we’ve always looked for somebody else to come up underneath us.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I know for for me in seasons when I led in fast-growing churches…

Shayla McCormick — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …churches that were deemed as some of the fastest growing churches in the country, I would say to my… Now, I sat in a different seat than you were because I was never like a founding team member. Well, that’s not actually not true. That’s not actually not true. I was in one church. But but I always tried to hold my role with open hands, even with my team.

Shayla McCormick — Yes.

Rich Birch — I would say, listen, the the people that I don’t I don’t want to get in the way of the mission, the mission is bigger than my job and my role.

Shayla McCormick — Yes.

Rich Birch — And there might come a season when the ministry will outpace me and I need to be willing to step aside.

Shayla McCormick — Yep. Yes.

Rich Birch — And that whenever I said that, there was always like, it freaked people out a little bit. They were like, oh my goodness, what are you saying? What are you saying? But I do think that those people that got us here may not necessarily be those people that will get us there. I’d love to hear your thoughts on that. And and this does not apply to any of the 25 people currently employed at Coastal Church, but help us understand…

Shayla McCormick — Hey, we’ve had this conversation with all of them, so it could apply to them.

Rich Birch — Oh good. Okay. Okay, good. I Okay, good. I didn’t want to you know have people listen to it at your church and be like, oh my goodness. But help me understand how you think about that as a leader, because I think that’s a real dynamic in this area.

Shayla McCormick — Yeah, there’s there’s two two things, two almost analogies that that I’ll give you. One was when we were a smaller church, we were a growing church, we were a church plant, and somebody gave us some some great advice. And they said, listen, the people you start with are not going to be the people you finish with, and that’s not a bad thing. That that happens.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Shayla McCormick — And they said, when you are building something, there’s a phase of that building that requires scaffolding.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Shayla McCormick — And scaffolding serves a purpose in that season to build the structure and the walls and and all of the things, but there is a point where that scaffolding has to come down…

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Shayla McCormick — …in order for you to utilize that building or that space effectively.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Shayla McCormick — And I think sometimes that’s people in a way. Like they serve a purpose for a season, but it’s not like, it’s not like oh, now they can’t serve in any capacity or any way. It’s just that the role that they played for that season was very important. But it looks different in the next season. And we have to be okay with that if we want to continue to grow.

Shayla McCormick — As we’ve grown, there was actually people probably know the name Charlotte Gambill. Charlotte Gambill has invested a lot in our team and in in our church. And she came in and did a ah session with us. And one of the things that she talked with us about is like, if you think about a a vehicle, right? And that vehicle is there to get you to the destination of where you’re going. And that vehicle has tires. And those tires have to be rotated.

Rich Birch — Right, oh, that’s good.

Shayla McCormick — And as a team member, you are like a tire. And what you are doing is getting that vehicle to the proper destination. But if you don’t allow yourself to be rotated, then there’s going to be a problem in getting that vehicle to the location.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Shayla McCormick — And so language that we use is this is mission over position.

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.

Shayla McCormick — And your position may change. Your position may rotate. But this is not about your position, this is about your mission. And if you’re not here because of the mission, then you’re gonna be fixated on your position.

Shayla McCormick — And so our team knows that. We we talk about that very frequently, like, hey, remember this is mission over position. And we’re gonna we’re gonna rotate the tire today.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Shayla McCormick — But this is because this is for the mission, not because of your position.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Shayla McCormick — And so we just consistently have those conversations. And if we if we don’t rotate those things, And if there’s something that’s worn out and we don’t change it, it’s going to affect the mission of where that organization is going.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so true.

Shayla McCormick — Yeah.

Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s, that’s worth the price of admission right there. I think, you know, I think so many of us, um you know, people who are listening in their church leaders, they love people. They want to see them take steps towards Jesus. And, you know, we hold onto people too long or we, or we, you know, we always believe the best. We’re like, no, they’re going to get there. They’re going to get there.

Rich Birch — But what would you say to a leader? You know, Give us some courage to say, hey, maybe there’s a team member we need to rotate, either find a different seat on the bus, or it might be we we need to move them off this year. Like we need to get them on a performance improvement plan and do the like, hey, you’re not leaving today, but it’s like, this has got a change. You’ve got a shift from being a doer to being an equipper. And we’re going to work on this for the next three months. But we need to see, we actually actually need to see progress on this. Give us some courage to do that. Talk us through that. If that’s the if that’s the leader that’s listening in today.

Shayla McCormick — I mean, I think first of all, if you’re sensing that and you’re feeling that, you need to start having some very honest conversations. I think Proverbs is very clear when it says, bind mercy and truth around your neck. Like, we can have those truthful conversations while still being merciful. And, you know, if if you’re not clear with people, then there’s just, then there’s there’s going to be hurt, there’s going to be bitterness, there’s going to be all of those things. And so if you can just even start the conversation, if you’ve been frustrated for a long time but you haven’t said anything, honestly, it’s your fault.

Rich Birch — Right. Yes.

Shayla McCormick — Because you’ve allowed it for so long.

Rich Birch — Right.

Shayla McCormick — And now that’s that’s you’ve allowed behavior to continue. So the first step I think is just giving yourself freedom to have a mercy and truth conversation, right? Of just going, hey, like I know your your heart is here I know you have vision for this organization, but there’s just some things that need to adjust.

Rich Birch — Right.

Shayla McCormick — And so we’re going to bring some clarity to those things that need to adjust.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Shayla McCormick — And you have those conversations and then, hey, let’s check in a month from now and just here’s some action steps for you to do. And it just gives framework for like, okay, now if they’re not doing those things, you’re just like, you know, hey, do you, we asked the question, do you get it? Do you want it? And do you have the capacity to do it?

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Shayla McCormick — If they have, if they get it and they want it, but they don’t have the capacity, they have to change their seat, you know.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Shayla McCormick — And so for me, I think it’s really starting off with the clarifying conversation…

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Shayla McCormick — …if you haven’t had that.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Shayla McCormick — And in that clarifying conversation leads to either an off-ramp or an adjustment of seat.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, that’s so good. I know that there are people who are listening in who that you know, like, hey, I’ve got to make a change. I have this staff member, team member that’s got to make a change. We can’t do this for another year. And even that idea of sitting down, having a you know, a truthful, but merciful conversation and doing exactly what Shayla said there. Let’s have the conversation and then document it.

Shayla McCormick — Yes.

Rich Birch — Here’s exactly what we talked about. Here are the three or four things that we need to see progress in the next month on. And we love you dearly, but in a month, we’re going to come back and actually ask you on that. My experience has been when you have that…

Shayla McCormick — And even…

Rich Birch — Yeah, go ahead.

Shayla McCormick — …even asking at the end of that, like, hey, do you have any questions? Or even repeat back to me what you heard…

Rich Birch — Right.

Shayla McCormick — …because I want to understand how you’re receiving the information that I just gave you, because it can help you even go a little bit deeper in shaping that.

Rich Birch — Clarify it. Yeah, that’s so good. Well, this has been a great conversation. Question that’s not really, it’s just kind of a broader question…

Shayla McCormick — OK.

Rich Birch — …about this coming year. What are the what are the questions that are kicking around in your head for this year as you look to 2026 as we come to kind of close today’s episode? What are you thinking about? Might be around this. It might be around other stuff. What are you thinking about this year?

Shayla McCormick — Ooh, I was actually talking to my husband about this. We’re getting ready to go into a leadership team meeting, and the thing that’s just been sitting in my head, and this is so probably counterintuitive to large church, but it’s how can I grow smaller?

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Shayla McCormick — And so I’m just trying to think how can we be more intentional as we grow to make a large church feel small? And then I’m also thinking, are we building a church that can grow without us? So how, you know, is it only because of us that things are happening? Or how are we, again, ah equipping people that if we weren’t here, it would continue on?

Rich Birch — I love that.

Shayla McCormick — So how do I grow smaller? And would this survive without us?

Rich Birch — Wow, those are two super profound questions. And they are so totally related to what we’re talking about today. Both of those, you’re only going to get to it feeling smaller. You know, that is that is the great irony of a growing church. I’ve said that to many. I didn’t I wasn’t as eloquent as you were there, but one of the, the interesting kind of tensions is when you become a church of 5,000, 10,000, 15,000, you get around those circles. Those churches are asking the, how do we be more intimate? How do we, um you know, we, okay. So we figured out how to gather crowds and, but how do we go beyond that? Right. How do we, how do we now, you know, really drive into deeper, more intimate conversations? I love that. And yes.

Shayla McCormick — Systems just complicate things.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Shayla McCormick — So it’s like, how do you how do you simplify? I really appreciate you, appreciate your leadership and all that you’re doing and how you helped us today. And if people want to track with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online?

Shayla McCormick — Yeah, they can follow our church on Instagram. It’s at Coastal Church or visit our website, coastalcommunity.tv. I’m not super active on Instagram, but you can follow me if you want to @shaylamccormick.

Rich Birch — That’s great. Shayla, I really appreciate you being here today. And thanks so much for helping us out as we kick off 2026.

Shayla McCormick — Of course. Thanks so much, Rich.

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re continuing our conversations with executive pastors from prevailing churches, unpacking what leaders like you shared in the National Executive Pastor Survey, so you can lead forward with clarity.

Today we’re joined by Paul Alexander, Executive Pastor at Sun Valley Community Church and Senior Consultant with The Unstuck Group. With more than 25 years of ministry experience and nearly 15 years at Sun Valley, Paul brings a blend of practitioner insight and coaching wisdom. Sun Valley is one of the fastest-growing churches in the country, with six physical locations, a prison campus, and more expansion on the way. In this conversation, Paul helps unpack one of the most pressing themes from the National Executive Pastor Survey: staff health, culture, and organizational structure.

Is your church clear on vision and strategy but still struggling to move forward? Do you sense tension or fatigue beneath the surface of your staff team? Paul offers candid, practical guidance on how leaders can cultivate both healthy and high-performing teams.

To learn more about Sun Valley Community Church, visit sunvalleycc.com. For resources on staff health, structure, and strategy, explore theunstuckgroup.com or email Paul directly.

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. Really glad that you’ve decided to tune in. We’re doing a special series here this month where we’re looking at the results of a national survey that we did of executive pastors across the country. And we’ve pulled in some leading XPs from prevailing churches to help us think through these issues. Like we’re sitting across the table, if you talk about this problem, they want to help you with that. And today it’s our honor, our privilege really to have Paul Alexander with us. He is the executive pastor at Sun Valley Church for over 10 years. He has 25 years of experience. He’s a senior consultant with Unstuck, I think for 13 years. And he’s worked with all kinds of churches on health assessment, strategic planning. Sun Valley, if you don’t know this church, you’re living under a rock. fantastic church in Arizona, six physical locations, if I’m counting correctly, plus in prison, plus online. It’s repeatedly one of the fastest growing churches in the country. Paul, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.

Paul Alexander — Yeah, Rich, glad to be with you. Hopefully the conversation can help your listeners, man.

Rich Birch — I really appreciate that. Why why don’t you fill in the picture about Sun Valley? I know we’ve had you on in the past. You should go back and listen, friends, but kind of give us the Sun Valley picture. Kind of tell us a little bit about that to set some context today.

Paul Alexander — Yeah, man, been here now for almost 15 years. It’s wild to think back. When I first joined the team, it was one location, 10 acres, one exit, one entrance.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Paul Alexander — And, you know, there’s a lid to what you can do with that. And so we had originally went multi-site because we had to go multi-site. You know, the mission that Jesus gave the church to help more people meet him and grow up in their friendship with him. We had a lid to that with the space we were in. And so we had to go multi-site. It wasn’t cool. It wasn’t cute. It wasn’t fun. It wasn’t an experiment. It was like, if we’re going to obey Jesus, we don’t have an option.

Rich Birch — Right. Yes.

Paul Alexander — And so over the years, we’ve had the opportunity to add new locations. And, yeah, six physical locations, one in a prison. Our next prison campus opens up Q1. We grand open our Chandler location in March, and we break ground on San Tan in May. So, yeah, man, fun times, lots of people meeting Jesus.

Rich Birch — So multi-sites not dead at Sun Valley.

Paul Alexander — Man, multi-site’s not dead in America. Yeah.

Rich Birch — I know. And it’s true, right? It’s one of those like, people are like, oh, I don’t know. That’s an old idea. I’m like, that’s not what I’m seeing. I’m like, gosh, there’s so many prevailing churches like Sun Valley that are just doubling down. That’s that’s fantastic.

Rich Birch — Well, looking forward to today’s conversation. So friends, you’ve joined us actually for within, what did we ask, two questions that were about fears for next year and or for this year, 2026, you caught me. We recorded this late in 2025.

Rich Birch — And we’re talking today about the biggest fear. 24.8% of all respondents identified staff health, organizational structure, morale, succession, leadership – the people issues as a primary fear heading into this year. In fact, and then a separate question we asked about data and insight. Where are you lacking some of that? Almost 9% of respondents answered that they’re looking for better data on staff pipeline and org chart and leadership development, these sort of things.

Rich Birch — When you combine them together what does that mean? Nearly three in ten surface staff related tension as a defining pressure point for 2026. And when I was thinking about this issue, I thought of no one better than Paul to pull on and to have this conversation with. So Paul, when you look at the churches across the country, you interact with a lot of churches both just because you’re a great person and through Unstuck, and you’re and Sun Valley’s a leading church and people will ask you questions all the time. Where do you think staff health breaks down the most and why is that? Why is this such a tension for us as we lead from our seats?

Paul Alexander — Yeah, well, to your point, Rich, it comes up repeatedly with my work with Unstuck with churches. It’s not uncommon to do a health assessment, strategic planning with the church, and you walk out of the room and they have great clarity on vision, on where they’re going next. They have great clarity on strategy, like how they’re actually going to pull this off and do it.

Paul Alexander — And yet you walk out of the room and the lid to move towards that vision, actually obey Jesus and do what Jesus has commissioned and command commanded them to do, the lid is the culture of the team. And the team culture and the team structure is what’s holding them back from going where Jesus wants them to go.

Paul Alexander — Which we shouldn’t be surprised by this, frankly. that’s That’s the organizational side of how that shows up. This shows up in our own life personally. So on a micro scale, what’s preventing you and I from actually following Jesus and what He’s calling us to do in 2026? Well, it’s not Jesus’s problem. The problem is not with him. The problem usually with us.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Paul Alexander — The problem is with how we structure our life, our family, our time, maybe something in our own heart and in the culture of our own heart and our families.

Paul Alexander — And so on on a macro scalele scale in the church, it’s not a surprise that this shows up. Most most churches have a tendency to run on a pendulum, Rich, of either being a really high performing team or a very, very healthy team. And at Unstuck, we want we want staff teams to be both very healthy and very high performing.

Paul Alexander — The the problem is most churches, their staff swing through that pendulum from one side to the other. And so, and you’ve seen this repeatedly, where it’s take ground and in just do the next thing. And they’re very project oriented and destination oriented, and they have a tendency to not really care about the soul of the team, the health of the team, and they’re caring much more about the the destination they’re chasing.

Paul Alexander — Or they’re sitting around looking at each other, praying for one another, kumbaya-ing together, and they’re neglecting the actual call that God’s put on their life. It’s not just a personal holiness, but to invite others people other people to know Jesus as well.

Paul Alexander — And while that’s an over-exaggeration, fundamentally, that’s very true of what happens with staff teams. And so, yeah, walking away from a strategic planning with the church, you’re thinking, oh, they’ve got everything they need.

Rich Birch — Right.

Paul Alexander — They just don’t have the culture to pull it off. their Their staff culture is going to prevent them from going where God wants them to go. Or they’ve hired ah a lot of doers on the team and they don’t actually have leaders. So they’ve hired people to do ministry instead of lead ministry. Or they don’t really have a development pipeline. You know, they don’t have a plan to coach up and build up people that the Lord’s already entrusted to them right underneath their nose, to invite them into leadership in the church. And so, yeah, there’s some overarching things that are common.

Rich Birch — Yeah, so when I saw this came out, I wasn’t surprised by this result. We’ve seen similar results in past years. But whenever I look at this fear that leaders have, I’m reminded what our mutual friend Jenni Catrin says. She talks about senior leaders are, we think our staff culture is better than it actually is. Like from our perspective, sitting as an executive pastor, lead pastor, we look around and we’re like, man, this is a great place to work. But that’s not necessarily the case with our people.

Rich Birch — Sticking with this idea of like high performing and healthy, when you think about Sun Valley or the churches you coach, what are some practical rhythms or structures that you’ve put in place or seen put in place that really help try to do both of those things. Cause I think that’s, I think that’s ultimately what honors the Lord is like, we do want to be high performing. We, the mission’s massive. Like, gosh, we got to get out and reach some people, but we, we don’t want to drive over our people to get there.

Paul Alexander — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Help us understand what does that practical, some of those practical rhythms look like.

Paul Alexander — Well, I don’t I don’t think a lot of XPs are going like what I’m about to say…

Rich Birch — Uh-oh.

Paul Alexander — …but you you cannot legislate health. You can’t. You can’t build enough guidelines. You can’t build enough policies. You can’t make people be healthy. You also can’t lead a healthy organization unless you yourself are healthy. It’s that’s a just it’s just a fact. You can’t take your family somewhere you haven’t been.

Paul Alexander — You disciple people, to use a Bible word for a second, you can’t disciple your own children and your own family and people close to you by intention or neglect. We do that all the time, and unless you have something to actually give them. And so this is why even in the Old Testament, you know God gives the law and we realize we can’t live up to the law. And so it honestly only shows our own imperfection. Right. And so God you know, Jesus says, “Well, hold on a second. The Sabbath was made for man. Man wasn’t made for the Sabbath.”

Paul Alexander — And so um what does that mean? It means, I think, as executive staff, senior staff in the church, you actually have to lead with some moral authority in this area. And so people are going to watch if if they get an email from you at 11 o’clock at night, that tells them what’s expected of them.

Rich Birch — Right.

Paul Alexander — Without you ever even saying it, you’re telling them what’s expected. If you’re texting them after work hours, so to speak, and it’s not an emergency, it actually, you know, it could probably wait till tomorrow, but you’re having it right now because it’s important to you, and you don’t have the personal self-control to be able to not have that conversation with that staff member at that time.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Paul Alexander — You’re telling them how they’re supposed to behave. They’re watching you just again, leadership so much like parenting. And I don’t want to minimize this, but children watch their parents and they naturally adhere to and take on the behaviors of their parents and the family unit that they grow up in.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so true.

Paul Alexander — And culture a lot like that. It’s way more caught than taught. And so the leaders of the executive staff and senior staff, they’ve got to lead with moral authority, not moral perfection. We’re not going to see that this side of seeing Jesus, right? Not moral superiority. We’re not better than anybody. But just to be able to say, hey, man, if if everybody at my church and on my staff. If they manage their time the way I manage my time, if they manage their finances the way I manage my finances, if they used alcohol the way I use alcohol, or if they use the internet or social media the way I do, if they traded their… would my church be more of what Jesus wants it to be or less?

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

Paul Alexander — And so there’s a moral authority component to this. They got to model this. Okay.

Paul Alexander — Now, practically, Rich, because you know, okay, what does it actually mean? Take your time off.

Rich Birch — Right.

Paul Alexander — Like that sounds so silly, but I mean, I remember as a young guy in ministry, my my wife was working Monday through Friday. Friday was supposed to be my day off. I’m not the kind of guy that’s going to sit around and like watch Oprah on Friday. Or like, you know, just snack and binge watch Netflix or something like that. That’s not how God wired me up. And so I would just go into the office.

Rich Birch — Right.

Paul Alexander — And I’m like, my my wife’s working. Well, we don’t have kids. um I’m going to go get some stuff done. I’m going to move the ball forward.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Paul Alexander — And I remember the XP I was working with on the senior staff at the time came in to get something out of the office. And he saw me and he’s like, Paul, what are you what are you doing? And so I do the whole, my wife’s working and I’m not going to sit around and watch Netflix, blah, blah, blah. He’s like… he gave me a gift. He said, Paul, if you don’t take every day off between now and the end of the year, don’t bother coming in in January.

Rich Birch — Oh my goodness.

Paul Alexander — Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Paul Alexander — And looking back, that high challenge was a tremendous gift, to begin to teach a young man in ministry that had a propensity to drive hard to learn how to actually slow down and enjoy my life and receive from the Lord.

Rich Birch — That’s interesting.

Paul Alexander — And so, um yeah, take your day off. It sounds so silly.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. No, it’s good.

Paul Alexander — I get a report on my desk once a year, Rich, of all of our staff, even multiple campuses, all that, who’s taking their time off and who hasn’t taken their time off. And it’s not uncommon for me to have a conversation in January to say, hey, dude, if you don’t take all your time off this year, we’re going to have a problem. Because you’re no good burning out. The Lord needs you in the game for the long run.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Paul Alexander — And I need you in the game for the long run. Sun Valley needs you in the game for the long run.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Right.

Paul Alexander — Your family needs that, and you can’t self destruct. So.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. I had a similar interaction early on in ministry where I had a senior leader say to me, it with a similar kind of tone, don’t forget, take your day off is on the same list as don’t kill someone. Like, you know, which always stuck with me where I was like, you know, okay. And he said it in a funny kind of like, but but the message was was clear, right?

Paul Alexander — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Same kind of thing. Hey, we, and I don’t know that I’ve always lived by that.

Paul Alexander — Yeah, sure.

Rich Birch — Are there other behaviors that you, you know, in a similar way would lean in. I think the fact that you’re pushing on, okay, as us as senior leaders, are we setting the pace with the health of our organizations? Lean a little bit more in on that for us.

Paul Alexander — Yeah, sure. So a couple of practical things that any leader can actually make their decision to start doing today. Establish a finish line. In some regards, you know, when is ministry ever really done?

Rich Birch — Right.

Paul Alexander — Well, when 7.5 billion people on the planet know Jesus, we’re done, right? So it’s one of those, the poor will have you with you you’ll have with you always. There’s never going to be a done moment. So you got to choose each day when you’re done. And if you don’t choose it, someone else will choose it for you.

Paul Alexander — And so talk with your family, figure it out. And there may be a moving target from day to day and what the rhythm of your family is and the rhythm of your ministry is the Lord’s entrusted to you. But you have to personally establish when’s the finish line. I’m going to turn my phone off. I’m gonna turn my email off. I’m going to mute this or whatever. And unless something’s burning down, I’m not going to I’m not going to jump in. Simple things.

Paul Alexander — Marriage retreats. We started experimenting some time ago with marriage retreats for our staff at Sun Valley. And so like everybody would say, it’s a good thing for people’s marriages to get better. And sometimes we’ll do that for our people in our churches. And we just thought, well, gosh, what if we did that for our staff? You know, if the marriages of our staff got better, would the ministries that the Lord’s entrusted to them get better? Of course they would.

Rich Birch — Of course they would, yeah.

Paul Alexander — So we just started doing a marriage retreat couple times a year for our staff.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Paul Alexander — We invite, you know, 10 to 15 couples. We have a professional counselor that we pay for that runs the thing. And we we just do that as a as a gift to our staff. Because we think, if our staff marriages get better, the ministry that the Lord’s entrusted to them will get better.

Paul Alexander — We do sabbaticals every seven years for our full-time director level staff and up. And there’s a period of time that they get and a financial allowance they get. And they think about it in three in three different buckets, like professional development, personal development, and just family. And and ultimately we want them to rest so they can minister from a from a full cup, you know?

Paul Alexander — And ah some time ago, we actually made the decision. It didn’t cost us anything, Rich, that even our full-time staff, no matter what their level in the organization was. So for example, a full-time administrative assistant. If they’re full-time, every seven years they get a sabbatical. We give them…

Rich Birch — Oh, wow.

Paul Alexander — …yeah, you’re full-time admin at Sun Valley. You get, now the scale of it’s a little different.

Rich Birch — Sure.

Paul Alexander — We just give them a month off with no financial allowance, but we give a month off every seven years to take at one lump sum…

Rich Birch — Wow.

Paul Alexander — …to get out and refresh their soul and enjoy their life a little bit. What’s that really cost us? Nothing, but time.

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Paul Alexander — Nothing.

Rich Birch — Right.

Paul Alexander — And so, yeah, there’s some real tactical things that you can do to invest in your team. Again, you can’t make them be healthy people, but you can kind of roll the carpet out and pave the way for them to be healthy people.

Rich Birch — I love that. That’s some real practical examples. I love what you’ve you’ve outlined there and been you know super practical. That’s, yeah, that’s fantastic. I get the sabbatical question actually quite a bit. I think churches wrestle with that and they you know they they think, oh, you know how should we do that? So you do, kind of like what we would typically think of as a sabbatical at director and above, but then everyone else does kind of this one one month off. That’s great. And they do they have to submit a plan for the sabbatical ahead of time? Some churches will do that where they have to kind of define, hey, this is how we’re going to do. Just give us a little more detail on that.

Paul Alexander — Yeah. We’re not uber religious about it, Rich.

Rich Birch — Sure.

Paul Alexander — We, we, we, there is a plan and their supervisor talks through their plan with them…

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Paul Alexander — …because there’s a financial allowance that follows that.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Paul Alexander — So yeah, they have the conversation ahead of time. As a representative of the board, I actually sign off on all those sabbaticals just to make sure they’re thinking about and they’re thinking…

Rich Birch — Right.

Paul Alexander — …intelligently about how they want to spend their time. But functionally, to be honest, like you and your wife just went on vacation, right?

Rich Birch — Yep.

Paul Alexander — If our staff went on vacation for like an entire sabbatical and sat on the beach for a month or two, and they came back a little bit more rested, and they’d read a couple of books and spent time with the Lord…

Rich Birch — Right.

Paul Alexander — …and they walked and prayed and fasted and enjoyed their life a little bit, they’d probably come back a little healthier.

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

Paul Alexander — So I don’t have strong feelings about it, man. Rest, enjoy your life.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, that’s good.

Paul Alexander — Yeah.

Rich Birch — That’s so good. I love that. I want to loop back on one thing you talked about earlier. You talked about hiring or or are the way our staff position themselves as doers versus leaders. I think this is a critical Ephesians 4, how we’re supposed to be equipping our people. But I see way too many of our team members, I see us fall into this all the time where we just slip into doing. Coach us around that. What difference does that make around cultures in our organizations?

Paul Alexander — Well, yeah. Wow. Now you’re starting to talk about where accountability comes into play in culture, right? And where culture gets violated.

Paul Alexander — So it’s not uncommon. So I still, at the size we are, director level and up, I still at least have a phone conversation interview with every single director level hire and up about our culture as they’re joining the team here. And if they do join the team, we go through net new staff orientation. Once a quarter, Chad, the lead pastor and myself, spend a half a day with all of our new staff and talk through our culture and our philosophy of ministry and our strategy and all that stuff.

Paul Alexander — And frankly, it’s just a time to hang out have a meal together and create some relational accessibility. Because most these people I’m not going to work with day to day.

Rich Birch — Right.

Paul Alexander — But I want them to know that we care about them, love them, and they’re they’re part of the family now. And so we we don’t hire people that aren’t absolutely fantastic, incredibly gifted people.

Rich Birch — Right.

Paul Alexander — And it’s easy to compliment everybody in the room.

Rich Birch — Right.

Paul Alexander — Hey man, glad you’re on the team. Whether I hired you or somebody else hired you, I know you’re awesome because we don’t hire people that aren’t awesome. And you were gifted, you’re gifted. Someone saw something in you. We invited you to the team. But here’s the deal. You’re no longer going to be evaluated on how awesome you are. Now that you’re on the team—congratulations—you’re going to be evaluated how awesome you can make everybody else.

Rich Birch — So good.

Paul Alexander — And so your job and how great you are and gifted you are and skilled you are, that’s what got you in the room. What’s going to keep you in the room is your ability to make everybody else just as incredible as you. And so we just say that from the very beginning.

Paul Alexander — And, you know, a lot of churches, their ministry staff kind of think, OK, I have to get all these volunteers in place to help them accomplish my ministry. At Sun Valley, we flipped that upside down. And the hero of the ministry at Sun Valley is the volunteer. We’re helping the church actually be the church. The staff’s role is to be a servant, to help people find their gifting, their place, their calling. And real leaders who are getting paid real money that attend your churches, um they want to solve big problems. They don’t want to just push a broom. Now, occasionally you run into the CEO or the general or whatever, who’s like, I just want to push a broom to help me remain humble. Great. We can we have a lot of brooms you can push.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Paul Alexander — But most people are competent, skilled, gifted, educated people. And they want to be called into something that’s big, and where they feel like they’re making a real difference. And so, yeah, our job as a staff is to call them into that, tee them up for that, support them in that, and let them run. Not let them run within the boundaries of our strategy and our culture and our vision, but let them run. So, but we’ve got to paint the riverbanks for them.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s really good. I love that. You know, kind of a related issue is how how is Sun Valley ensuring that you’ve got the right people in the right seats? What does that look like in your system? Like, how are you, like, what’s the what’s the cadence of, you know, regular reporting and like goal setting?

Paul Alexander — Yeah.

Rich Birch — And, you know, how are you holding people accountable? What does that what does that look like? I realize that could be like a whole episode in of itself…

Paul Alexander — Sure.

Rich Birch — …but give us kind of a thumbnail version of that.

Paul Alexander — Yeah. Thumbnail. I mean, at the end of the day, I’ll give you the, how it happens, but, besides the hiring process and recruiting process, that stuff matters a lot. Right. So you’re inviting people to something that they’re actually gifted and called to. But at the end of the day, um it’s really results, Rich. The Bible way to say that is fruit.

Rich Birch — Right.

Paul Alexander — OK, for all of our listeners who are high on the theology side of things, I can sympathize with you. I went to Bible school, too. Really, it’s fruit. And when you are in a place, when your staff are in a place where they’re playing to their strengths and their gifting, and they’re in a place where they’re not overreaching and trying to attain a different role, and they’re not talking about career path, they’re just content to be the person and play the part in the body of the Lord’s gifted and call them to to play, they’re going to have more fun and they’re going to produce more fruit.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Paul Alexander — It’s just a fact. And so when when you see all this striving and, you know, this ambition to like, I want more, I want more, I want more. It’s a very American, Western idea, right? And the biblical way of doing that would be, hey, well why don’t you be faithful with what the Lord’s entrusted with you today? And when he sees fit to entrust more to you, guess what? He probably will.

Rich Birch — He will.

Paul Alexander — There’s probably going be some stray arrow out of the battle that was never even intended to hit that guy. It’s going to find just the right place in the chink in the armor. And you’re going to ascend to the throne at the right time when the Lord wants you to. So, you know, relax. Do what the Lord’s called you to do today.

Rich Birch — Right.

Paul Alexander — Be faithful in that.

Rich Birch — Right.

Paul Alexander — And he’ll entrust more to you when he’s ready.

Rich Birch — Right.

Paul Alexander — So that’s a big deal. that it may sound ah like a contrite, a little bit Bible answer to that. But when your staff are personally in a place where they’re doing what God’s called them to do, and they’re they’re very sober-minded about that, they’re going to have more fun. That’s really important. They’re go to have more fun in ministry. It’s going to be more fulfilling and they’re going to produce more fruit.

Paul Alexander — Now, how’s that work its way out with what you’re talking about? We have an annual run of strategic planning that we do, both senior staff and then at the campus level. And that we refresh that every single year. Out of that come real clear objectives where the Lord’s calling us to go. Then goals, professional goals are set around that at the campus level. And then that kind of trickles down. That all gets into review systems. There’s monthly one-on-ones where they’re talking about the performance side of things.

Paul Alexander — But it’s really normal, Rich, where if you and I were working with one another and I was reporting to you, you’d say, hey, Paul, what’s going on with you and Lisa? And you’d be asking about my daughters and you’d be asking about my sons. And we’d be talking about life and marriage and family. And and what’s the Lord doing in your life? What’s he saying to you these days? You know, and you know where’s he challenging you? Where’s he encouraging you? So they’re very natural, normal, that part of things there. You’d probably pray for me actually in that meeting that one-on-one.

Paul Alexander — And then we talk about, okay, how are we doing with our goals? What what are the measurables? What are the setbacks? Because there’s always setbacks.

Rich Birch — Right.

Paul Alexander — And what are the things that went faster than you thought they would go? And you’re finding real real traction.

Rich Birch — Right.

Paul Alexander — And then my your job as a supervisor would be, how do you get roadblocks out of the way for me to be successful?

Rich Birch — Right.

Paul Alexander — How do you fuel things that I need fueled so I can be successful and and reach my goals?

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Paul Alexander — So yeah, does that make sense?

Rich Birch — That makes total sense. So I, you know, in other contexts, I’ve said results matter because the work that you do matters so much. Like and, and we, and we, we want to think about results. We want to think about fruit. What percentage of, or you know, in a round sense of the team at Sun Valley has like a number or a metric or a like they can measure, it’s not like qualitative, like, oh, things are better. It’s like, no, no, we know. I know whether this is working or not. What percentage of your people you think have a metric like that they they think about on a regular basis?

Paul Alexander — All of them.

Rich Birch — Love it. Tell us about that. I think this is going to be mind blowing for leaders of churches who do not think about these things. And I know, you know, there’s people out there who, who they they haven’t wrestled with this idea. Unpack that a little bit more.

Paul Alexander — Yeah. So, I mean, okay. So if I say, I want my marriage to get better this year, we’ll go real personal for a second.

Rich Birch — Sure.

Paul Alexander — I want to get my marriage. That’s wonderful. Who doesn’t want their marriage to get better? How are you going to do that?

Rich Birch — Right.

Paul Alexander — That that just doesn’t magically happen. You don’t drift towards relational intimacy with your spouse.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Paul Alexander — What you do is you drift apart. That’s what happens.

Rich Birch — Right.

Paul Alexander — Absence doesn’t make the grow heart grow fonder. It makes it wander.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Paul Alexander — And so, you know, you’ve got to figure out, okay, how many date nights am I going to do? How much am I going to budget towards this? Are we going to do an annual retreat as a husband and a spouse together, maybe a marriage retreat? Are we going to go on vacation? What are the conversations we feel like we need to lean into? Do we need some do we need some coaching? Rich, if you’re a professional counselor, do I need to go to you and get some some input and some professional coaching? Because goodness gracious, you can see some things that I don’t see because I’m in the fray of it day in and day out.

Paul Alexander — So yeah, we’ll get real tactical and say, what book are you going to read? How many of those books are you going to read? What podcast?

Rich Birch — Right.

Paul Alexander — Are you going listen to the unSeminary podcast? You know. What are you going to do to to grow and in your marriage this year or as a leader. And so, yeah, if you can’t measure it, then you can’t actually do it.

Rich Birch — Right.

Paul Alexander — And then it gets down to opinions and, you know, everybody’s got one of those. So.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Alright. I imagine imagine I’m an executive pastor you meet at a conference or you’re somewhere and you’re at an airport lounge, and they’re church of a thousand people, maybe 1500 people. They’ve got 10 staff and they’re sensing that, man, there’s some misalignment, but it’s it’s at the level of like, I think there might be a problem here. I’m not entirely sure. I feel like there’s cracks starting to happen in the staff culture, but it’s not like a giant fizzer. It’s just like things just don’t feel right. What would be some of the first steps that you would suggest a leader take to try to get clarity on actually where things are at with their staff team…

Paul Alexander — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …you know, in the next 90 days kind of thing?

Paul Alexander — Yeah, that’s a good question. Okay, so first of all, I’d say, and this may sound, I mean, play Captain Obvious for a second, don’t ignore that inclination.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Paul Alexander — So the Holy Spirit is is is impressing upon you, something doesn’t smell right, then it probably doesn’t smell right.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Paul Alexander — Don’t bury that. Don’t avoid that. Avoiding something you know you have to solve is never going to make that situation better, ever.

Rich Birch — That’s so true.

Paul Alexander — And so don’t avoid it. Go with that feeling. Lean into it a little bit and and begin. Why? Why do I feel this way? What is what am I sensing that needs to be solved? Because my hunch is they’re anticipating something. If they are a good intuitive leader, they’re probably anticipating something before it’s going to happen.

Paul Alexander — And so structure is always a lid to growth in a church. Churches always need to restructure. This is really important. So once you get a structure, it’s not like, oh we’re going to be with this structure for the next 15 years.

Rich Birch — Right.

Paul Alexander — And if it’s a growing church, you’re always going to need to restructure. And that’s just normal. Get used to it.

Rich Birch — Right.

Paul Alexander — It’s just part of what it is.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Paul Alexander — And so I think you’ve got decipher, is it a structure issue or is it a culture issue? That that’s, you know, Wwhat am I sensing that needs to be actually needs to be solved? If it’s a culture issue, where is there a violation of your culture taking place, and how do you help it get better? Maybe you haven’t defined what your culture is.

Rich Birch — Right.

Paul Alexander — Maybe you can’t actually really articulate it. Maybe you haven’t written it down, trained it. Maybe you have not filmed 5 to 10 minute videos for every new staff member to to onboarding to actually understand your cultural distinctives. Maybe you’ve not embedded that into your annual reviews and actually, you know at review time, you’re actually reviewing me on how we’re doing, how I’m doing with our staff culture.

Paul Alexander — So maybe that’s something you need to just kind of look in the mirror and say, you know what, as a leader, I have the power to change that. And I’m going to get that better this next year. We’re going really clear about what our staff culture is.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Paul Alexander — And then we’re going embed that and train it. If it’s a structural thing, is it truly a structural thing or do you have one or two players that just aren’t playing their part? You know, you’ve got ah this wonderful body the Lord’s put together. He talks about the church being the body of Christ, this wonderful body but where we’re limping because our ankle, we got a bum ankle. And the reality is we either need to rest it, you know, so we can get it healed up. We need to maybe get some repair done to it, or we need to like reconstruct that thing. We need a new ankle.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Paul Alexander — All of those are fine answers. And I think just being honest about the team that we have and everybody playing in the right place. And then structurally, you start to get into span of care and you know do we have the right number of staff? Those are real answers you can really get. When we do staffing and structure with churches at the Unstuck Group, there are real healthy benchmarks. There are real healthy financial numbers that are good benchmarks, you know. If you’re spending more than 50 cents on the dollar on your staffing, you should ask yourself why.

Paul Alexander — You know, if you have more than your staffing, you’re, you know, beyond one to 75 and you’re creeping into an area that’s really unhealthy. You know, I’ve seen churches that are staffed like one full time staff member for every 30 attenders at the church.

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Paul Alexander — And you’re just like. It’s sad, frankly, because the Lord’s called us to so much more. And um so those are those are like the basic science side of things that need to be changed. You know, if you’re not clear about who your senior staff is, if you got, if your senior staff, like your executive staff, are making decisions about like the color of the carpet, and they’re making decisions that that are low-level decisions, then you kind of got to look in the mirror and say, boy, are we training our staff that all big decisions have to come to us? Or are we pushing decisions down and actually teaching people how to lead and make decisions? So myriad of things.

Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s so good. One of, in last year’s, kind of rundown of, you know, most listened to podcasts, Amy from the Unstuck Group, hers, I think was our second most listened to podcast. And she, she dove in deep on exactly what we were just talking about their, friends. You should go back in the archives, find that episode. It will, it’ll, you know, all that structure stuff.

Rich Birch — And I would say on that, particularly on structure and some of those benchmarks, I think too many of us think our church is like this precious, it’s so different than every other church out there. And and and that’s true. It is a unique body. There’s a there’s one way that that is true. But in this way, there are actually a lot of commonalities you can learn from other churches and gain wisdom from folks like Paul who have done this before and talked with lots of churches. So don’t don’t be in isolation about this, Paul. This has been an incredibly helpful. I’ve got a page of notes and other questions I wanted to ask as we were going through. Oh, I want to talk about that. Oh, I want to talk about that.

Rich Birch — But I know you’ve got other things to do than be on our podcast. But as you’re thinking about the 2026, the year coming up here, what’s a question or two that you’re wrestling with that you’re thinking through? It doesn’t have to be on what we just talked about there. But just as you think about the future of Sun Valley, what are some things that you’re thinking about going into this year?

Paul Alexander — Yeah, that’s a good question. I mean, we pressure we’ve deal with pressure points just like every church does, right? Frankly, the pressure points we’re dealing with, we’re going through a season of a couple of years of pretty significant growth. A lot of people needing Jesus. last This is the first time in back-to-back years we baptized more than 1500 people, you know, in back-to-back years. And so there’s a huge responsibility that our growth, our front end growth is beginning to outpace our engagement. Things like people engaging in groups and building meaningful friendships that are around God’s word or, engaging and volunteering and being the church, not just coming to church, right? And a giving, learning to be generous, generous and steward with the Lord’s entrusted to them. Kind of these markers that we see of people who are actually beginning to look like Jesus. They’re not just, you know, you know, attending church and trying to figure Jesus out a little bit.

Paul Alexander — And so in a lot of ways, we need a bigger boat. We’ve got multiple campuses that are doing two services on Saturday and three services on Sunday. And we’ve, we’ve got to get some bigger rooms. And you know, the other side of it is is growth sometimes can grow faster than our ability to grow leaders. I mean, you think about your own personal leadership, Rich. I mean, how long has it taken you to become the leader you are today?

Rich Birch — Right. Right. Not overnight. Not in 18 months.

Paul Alexander — Yeah, your whole life.

Rich Birch — Yes, exactly.

Paul Alexander — Yeah, the answer is your whole life.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Paul Alexander — And so there’s definitely been crucible moments. My hunch is if we unpack your leadership journey, there’s been crucible moments where the Lord has ah stretched and grown you in unique ways and unique seasons because of pressure points that you went through. And so um we’re figuring out how do we accelerate leadership in in our staff?

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Paul Alexander — And you you accelerate leadership not by by giving resources, but by constricting resources. Because leaders always figured out and grow through constriction moments.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Paul Alexander — And so giving stretch assignments, all those kind of fun things. So yeah, we deal with pressure points just like everybody else does. I mean, everybody’s like, oh, I’d love to have that problem. I know you would. It’s a wonderful problem to have. It’s still a problem because we don’t want to become a lid to more people meeting Jesus in 2026. You know, by us not solving something that’s in our control to solve.

Rich Birch — Yeah. In other contexts, I’ve talked about platinum problems. Those are are great problems, but they’re still problems with things we have to wrestle with. And and friends, if you’re not tracking with Sun Valley, you should be, or Paul or the Unstuck Group, these are all organizations you should be getting a chance to kind of follow along with. If people want to kind of connect with the church, get a better sense, follow along with your story, where do we want to send them online? Tell us about that. And then also Unstuck Group. I want to make sure we we send people there too.

Paul Alexander — Yeah, Unstuck Group is super easy to find. Unstuckgroup.com. The listeners can email me at [email protected]. That’s the easiest way to get me, frankly. The easiest, cleanest way to get me if someone has a question or wants to follow up on something personally. I’m happy to do that, man.

Rich Birch — Thanks so much, Paul. I appreciate you being here today and and really looking forward to seeing what happens in 2026 at Sun Valley. Take care, man.

Paul Alexander — Yeah, glad to, man. Thanks for the invitation. Hope the conversation is helpful.

 

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re sitting down with an executive pastor from a prevailing church to unpack what leaders like you shared in the National Executive Pastor Survey, so you can lead forward with clarity.

We’re joined by Jeremy Peterson, Executive Pastor at One Church, a fast-growing multisite church with five physical locations across New Hampshire and a strong online presence. Jeremy is also a key leader behind the Executive Pastor Summit (XPS), investing in the health and effectiveness of second-chair leaders across the country. In this conversation, Jeremy reflects on insights from the National Executive Pastor Survey and shares practical wisdom for strengthening one of the most critical—and often fragile—relationships in the church: the partnership between the lead pastor and executive pastor.

Is your relationship with your lead pastor thriving, strained, or somewhere in between? Are you feeling neutral when you know the relationship needs to be strong? Jeremy offers clear, experience-tested guidance on building trust, maintaining alignment, and leading with integrity in the second chair.

To learn more about One Church and reach out to Jeremy, visit church.one. For executive pastors looking to grow in their leadership, learn more about the Executive Pastor Summit at xpsummit.org.

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

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

Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. We are in the middle of these special episodes we’ve been doing where we’re reflecting back on what you said in the National Executive Pastor Survey. And what we’re doing is bringing executive pastors from prevailing churches on to really help us wrestle through some of the things that we saw and ultimately to provide some help for you as you launch here into 2026. Today, it’s our privilege to have the executive pastor of all executive pastors, Jeremy Peterson with us from One Curch. It’s a fantastic church, a multi-site church in Northeastern United States. They have five, if I’m counting correctly, outpost locations in New Hampshire, plus church online, plus Jeremy’s involved in a leading XPS, a great conference for executive pastors and and and and campus pastors. And he does all kinds of amazing stuff. So Jeremy, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.

Jeremy Peterson — It’s quite the introduction. Thanks, Rich, for having me.

Rich Birch — This is the problem you become you become a more than one-time guest. And I’m like, what do I say? He’s amazing. That’s what you should say. Tell us a little bit about One Church, to set the context for people, understand a little bit about your background, where you’re at.

Jeremy Peterson — Yeah, so I spent the first 17 years in ministry in Texas, and I’ve been here for 12 and a half years now, and it’s it’s pretty wild. I said I would never be on the mission field. I grew up as a missionary kid, and so being here, I really feel like I am on the mission field. I’ve been here 12 and a half years, and we just celebrated like our 4,000th person that’s been baptized…

Rich Birch — Amazing.

Jeremy Peterson — …since I’ve been here. And so it’s just it’s just been quite the ride being a part of what God’s doing and just trying not to mess it up.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. Well, this thing we’re looking at today to kind of kick the conversation off, there was a a stat that jumped out to me from our study. 22.32% of executive pastors, that’s just over one in five, are either uncertain or experiencing strain with their lead pastor. Now, I know that that’s a minority number. It’s not like two-thirds are like struggling with this. It’s it’s It’s just over one in five.

Rich Birch — But to me, that’s still a hauntingly large number that one in five executive pastors we would bump into and say, I’m not sure that that relationship is working well. So I’d love to start the conversation there. Why do you think the lead pastor and executive pastor relationship, why is there kind of tension there? Why would people be experiencing that? And and personally, I think, man, that relationship’s got to be strong for the the health of the church. But help us understand, maybe set the problem up for us. What what do you think is going on there when that relationship is strained?

Jeremy Peterson — Yeah, it’s interesting to stat, Rich, because talking to a lot of executive pastors around the country like you do, I feel like that number may even be a little bit higher.

Rich Birch — Right.

I think so surveys are incredibly helpful, but I feel like one of the biggest challenges or conversations that I’m having on a regular basis with other executive pastors is I’m not sure the lead pastor trusts me. Sometimes it’s like, I’m not sure that I trust my lead pastor.

Jeremy Peterson — And so I think there’s definitely a tension, which I think it’s, there there are two roles that are so incredibly crucial for the church, right. You have either the cedar senior or lead pastor, who’s really the one casting the vision. And you’ve got the executive pastor in that second role or that second chair, that’s really called to like help execute on the vision. And when there’s like, trust or mistrust, lack of trust, whatever it may be, that can cause a lot of, i think, tension and frustration if it’s not if it’s not addressed in some capacity.

Rich Birch — Yeah. And I do get these calls as well. I sometimes what happens is i’ll I’ll be talking to an executive pastor, maybe I’m on site and they’ll pull me aside and they’ll say, you know, I just love my lead pastor. So fantastic. They’re an amazing vision-caster. They do such a great job. And then they they rattle off all this real positive stuff. And then they’ll say, but can you help me get better at this relationship how do I… Or it’ll be a lead pastor will pull me aside and say oh i just i love the executive pastor here and they’ll same thing rattle off that person’s so good at getting stuff done and they manage the team so well and never worry about money stuff, and and then there’s a but. But could you help me get better at that relationship like ah it’s like we’re struggling around this.

Rich Birch — What would be some early signs in conversations that you’re having that maybe there’s the trust is starting to erode a bit that that’s drifting towards this kind of, Ooh, this is things are not in a good place. What are some of the telltale signs in those conversations that you see? Ooh, we maybe have a trust problem here.

Jeremy Peterson — Yeah. Trust is really interesting because I feel like, um, really time builds trust. I mean, I feel like I’m, I usually kind of err on the side of like, hey I’ll trust you until you, until you cause reasons to bring like, untrust or whatever that may be…

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeremy Peterson — …or or break the trust. Because it takes, I feel like time, time is what really builds on trust, but it’s something that can be also lost overnight.

Rich Birch — Very quickly.

Jeremy Peterson — And so, um, I think a few things that I’ve noticed over the years, As trust begins to erode, I think there’s ah a few things that I would that I would hit on. I think um a few of them is just as being consistent. So like as an executive pastor, are you like are you reliable? Are you are you dependable? Are you doing what you say you’re going to do? Are you coming in with like a calm calm spirit? Sometimes senior pastors or lead pastors can be all over the place. They can be upset or frustrated, and if you kind of come in as like the is the constant like in the midst of a storm and you can kind of calm that down a little bit, I think that that’s that’s really helpful.

Jeremy Peterson — I think a big part of it is just is being truthful. So like in the consistency, are you being truthful? Because a senior pastor needs somebody who can speak the truth into them. Most of most staff even other um I think a lot of senior pastors they’re just not very trusting people by nature, and so I think when you have somebody who can speak truth into you, I think it actually starts developing and growing the trust. I feel like if you’re the same time i feel like if you’re holding back all the truth, I feel like like trust starts eroding over time if you’re holding back some of the truth.

Jeremy Peterson — So take something like weekly attendance, right? Senior pastors, lead pastors really, really care about seeing like about attendance. But if you are not being like fully truthful or transparent, little if you start holding some of the information, the information is going to come out in some capacity.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeremy Peterson — And so I think if you start holding on to that, that can start breaking or even eroding the trust over time. So I think that consistency is a is a huge thing. I think another part of it is…

Rich Birch — Yeah. I think…

Jeremy Peterson — …oh go ahead.

Rich Birch — No, no, I was just going say, it’s amazing how, and what was that poem? Like everything I learned about life I learned in kindergarten. It’s amazing though, how much the just the core idea of like, do what you say, do what you said you were going to do.

Jeremy Peterson — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Like it’s, but it’s amazing how for some leaders we, they seem to struggle with that, that it’s like, well, you said you were going to do this. Like, why did you not do it? It’s incredible. What else else were going to say there?

Jeremy Peterson — Oh yeah, the other thing was just going to add is I think clarity is so crucial. You’ve been an executive pastor. I think sometimes we go into this like problem solving mode and we’re constantly trying to think of like, how do we solve this problem? How do we how do we get in front of it?

Jeremy Peterson — And so a lot of times we don’t even have clarity, even necessarily around what the senior pastor or lead pastor are trying to accomplish. And we’ve already gone into like fix it mode before even we even have a full picture of like what’s trying to be accomplished. And if you’re not constantly like syncing up in some capacity with the senior pastor, I think that that’s where some of the trust can break over time.

Jeremy Peterson — So like I have a standing lunch every single Monday, regardless of what’s going on, unless we’re on vacation, we get together and we sync up every single Monday to have a conversation. And I remember initially it was like, well I don’t know that I can commit to a, you know, weekly lunch time and doing this. And so unless there’s some random exception for us, Mondays is really that chance to be able to sync up, make sure that we’re on the same page. And and I think really in that time, kind of not only hear like what’s God placed on your heart, but but I’m building camaraderie.

Jeremy Peterson — So like, and by camaraderie, I don’t I don’t feel like in any sense, like you as an executive pastor and lead pastor need to be best friends. But I feel like having some kind of common interests where you can you can spend some time together, you can have conversations that are not just work related, but a lot of it’s also about like hey what’s going on in your life. Like what’s happening not just here at the church but what’s happening in your own life? What’s going on? Like like being aware of those things, I think the more you can have those conversations it’s not just all about work all the time, I think that that helps build trust builds that relationship with your senior lead pastor as well.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I’d love to come back to that the kind of friendship, co-worker relationship thing there.

Jeremy Peterson — Yeah

Rich Birch — But you said something earlier that caught my attention, this idea of a standing lunch on Mondays. Are there any other, in your relationship with Bo, a part of why I was excited to talk to you about this is as an outsider, I perceive you guys are like, those guys seem to like working with each other.

Rich Birch — They’re like, the fact that you’ve been there for 12 years and you continue to be there is a sign of that and vice versa. He continues to love working with you and it’s a prevailing church. You guys are taking new ground. Mondays, lunchtime, that’s a core behavior practice, intentional practice. Are there other things that you’re doing as you think about engaging with him in a way that build trust or build that relationship?

Jeremy Peterson — That’s a great question. So I think two things is, I will constantly drop into his office and have a five minute conversation, or make a five minute phone call. I’ve realized that over the years, how much time and probably pain I could have spared both of us…

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeremy Peterson — …had we just dropped in and had those conversations. And so kind of a a best practice that we would have now is like, hey, pick up the the phone and let’s have a five minute conversation…

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeremy Peterson — …instead of like potentially hours on the back end of things that we may have to undo or repair just because you know you may have had a question, doubt, frustration, whatever it may have been like. Just go ahead and voice those things and let’s have those conversations and then let’s move on versus like dwelling on it. Because I think that’s where the enemy does a really good job getting a foothold. And it’s like, hey, if I can just create a little little doubt or a little dissension here, then I can help break away and erode that trust.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Could you give me an example, that’s maybe not too close to home, of what one of those five minute things would be? Because I think that’s a good insight that like, hey, I should just like pick up the phone or drop by and like, hey, here’s something either I heard I can I can see that or I’ve thought of a similar thing around, like I see something that’s getting going and I’m like, I could wait to meet with the executive team and everybody or like, I but I really should just get my lead pastor’s thoughts on where his head’s at on this issue. Because if this thing gets too far down the road…

Jeremy Peterson — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …you know, we could be causing pain. What would be some examples of the kind of things that you think those kind of five minute drop-ins are helpful with?

Jeremy Peterson — Yeah, I mean, something is simple as we had one of our locations was going from two services to three services. And so I had a conversation with the outpost pastor and we started talking through what those things are.

Jeremy Peterson — And we’re like, yeah, these three times make sense. And we just kind of ran with it. And so in retrospect, we start going to print. So we get to the point where it’s like going on the website, it’s going to print. And he asked me, he’s like, what are these times? Like, why why did we land on these times?

Jeremy Peterson — And so it was realizing that sometimes it’s those simple things, but if you can constantly be dropping in shoot a text, have a quick conversation, like the amount of things that we had to undo to fix something like that, was big. Another thing that he’s he’s shifted a lot now, but early on, it would not be uncommon for, say, one of our student pastors to go up to him and say like, hey, I know you did student ministry back in the day. I’m thinking about doing this. And he would be like, that sounds like a great idea. Just go for it. Not thinking through like all the details and ramifications of what that looked like.

Jeremy Peterson — And so next thing I know, I’m in a meeting with one of our student pastors and they’re like, hey, Bo said that we should do this. And I’m like, hold the phone, like no we’re not we’re not doing that.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jeremy Peterson — And so having those short conversations really trying to operate under the like the no surprise premise which is what him and I operate under. Our elders operate under that as well. So we’ve we’ve kind of shared the same thing with our elders is like, hey, if you have questions or concerns, pick up the phone, make a call, always choose to believe the best instead of assuming the worst.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. You know, speaking with weight, you know, that’s always a shrewd move by staff to like, if I can just get the lead person to say, yeah, yeah go do that that. That’s like a blank check. Well, Bo said, you know, I can imagine that, that

Jeremy Peterson — He signed off on it. It’s fine.

Rich Birch — It’s fine. It’s totally fine. We’re buying the corporate jet. It’s fine. Let’s go back to the best friends versus coworkers thing.

Jeremy Peterson — Yeah.

Rich Birch — I see that this is an interesting relationship. And I’ve had I’ve had the privilege of working for three incredible lead pastors who I have really good positive relationships with. And, you know, we got a lot of stuff done, moved a lot stuff for the kingdom. And we’re friendly, like we’re we were close, but we weren’t like dudes. We were not like, you know, going to whatever dudes do like, you know.

Rich Birch — And, so I sometimes had tension around in my own brain around like, should I be more friendly with these people? I don’t know. Help us understand, pull that apart. How, what do you think is healthy? What, what, what’s the kind of a minimum viable relationship? You know, how do we think through our you know, that, that side of this, this relationship?

Jeremy Peterson — Yeah, that’s that’s a really, that’s I think it’s probably different for every senior executive pastor relationship, but I feel like there’s some who think that they need to be best friends.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeremy Peterson — So like every vacation we do, like our families need to do this together. Every hobby, like we need to be a part of that together. What I’m also realizing is that there there’s probably some common interests that you share.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeremy Peterson — And they may not be the same. So like your lead pastor may like to golf. You may not like to golf. I may really like to fish. He does not really care to fish.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeremy Peterson — But but there are common interests that we’ve realized over time. So a lot of that could be sports. So like we follow one of the same college football teams. We both enjoy working out. And so being able to share some of the best practices in those areas, I think it is finding like, where’s their common ground?

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Jeremy Peterson — And how can we have a conversation? At the same time, I don’t know how healthy it is for you to be best friends. And because there are times where that could actually keep you from being fully truthful with them in in worries that you may like you may impact your relationship in some capacity. I think that’s a dangerous place to be.

Rich Birch — That’s good. How do you think, so we’re really talking here about trust and how we’re building trust. How are we trustworthy people with our lead pastor and are seen by being trustworthy with our lead pastor and then vice versa? How do we, you know, continue to try to, you know, choose trust with them and engage in a way?

Rich Birch — How do you think this idea of building trust ends up rippling into other relationships as, as, ah as we lead as an executive pastor? I often think, you know, we, we, we end up in, we’re in this really interesting kind of intersection of vision and execution. And so, you know, oftentimes I think lead pastors, when they’re doing their job, right, they are like a large portion of what they’re doing is thinking about vision and about the future. And then our job is to figure out, okay, how does that actually, how do we make that work?

Rich Birch — And so we got to work with all these other relationships. What’s the connection here around trust and relationships with our staff, with our staff teams, maybe younger staff, what’s that look like?

Jeremy Peterson — And I think it goes back to being truthful. If I overcommit and under deliver, then I can only do that a couple of times before like trust will start to erode. And I’ve seen it times over the years where like somebody way overcommits on this and they’re like, no problem, we can do this. And you know we’re going to have 10,000 people show up to it, but it’s going to be amazing. And then you you hype it up in such a way that then then the event or the function, whatever it is, happens. And then all of a sudden you like, you feel like you way under delivered. You can only that I think ah a few times before it starts to become like, man, I’m not sure. Like I know, I know Jeremy said he was going to do this, but like he keeps dropping the ball. He keeps committing at super high level and he’s not executing at that level. I think that that starts impacting things. um

Jeremy Peterson — There’s a, there’s a great book out there um that Stephen Covey wrote. He’s probably most, probably most well known for The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, I think is the name of the book.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Jeremy Peterson — He wrote another book that’s not as well known, but the book is called Speed of Trust.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Jeremy Peterson — And it’s a great reminder that like the more you work on being synced up together, the more trust begins to grow, the faster you can actually move and operate as an organization and as an entity, the more that that is built. And so so if you haven’t had a chance to read it, fascinating read. It was really helpful for me to understand that like, the more truthful I am, the more consistent I am, the more clarity I’m providing and actually executing at that level, then the more trust begins to build. And therefore allows us to actually move at a pretty rapid pace, the more that that foundation is built.

Jeremy Peterson — And I think it impacts the staff as a whole. it’s It’s a little bit like the mom-dad relationship. Like if there’s tension or if they’ve like if there’s been a fight or an argument, like as as kids, like you can tell something’s off.

Rich Birch — Right. Yes.

Jeremy Peterson — What did dad say? Or you know why is mom upset with dad? um I think ah the staff can sense that. Like If something is off between the two of you, they can start to begin to wonder, doubt. They can even begin to you know, put in like suspicious thoughts of like, man, something must be off here. Something’s out of sync. And so I think that that’s a big part of it is just, is taking time, working on the relationship, and then just watching it kind of like grow and blossom over time. But also I would encourage, like if you’re a new executive pastor to the role, just realize that like you can’t buy time.

Rich Birch — It just takes time.

Jeremy Peterson — I’m an investment over years, the things that you’ve learned. You know, we talk often here about like failing fast and cheap because we feel like failure is actually needed to be able to accomplish what God’s calling us to do. But I think if you’re not truthful and transparent as that’s happening, then then it’s not long before it it starts catching up to you.

Rich Birch — That’s good. That reminds me one of the the, you know, axioms I’ve talked about with our teams is, you know, there’s, there’s no bad information. There’s just because I think sometimes like something might go wrong, you might have an event, you might be a team member, you, you know, you busted something, it could be as simple as, you know, youth event, we had literally had this happen, we opened a brand new building. And the very first youth event, there was a car, we had a kid go through the wall, and it busted a like it, you know, but busted a wall, like his brand new building, $15 million dollar build. Wow. This is amazing. You know, put a hole in the wall.

Rich Birch — And you know, there’s no bad information. What makes that hole in the wall worse is if we never hear about it, and it gets covered up and someone puts a, you know, well, we’ll just move this, you know, whatever, some furniture.

Jeremy Peterson — Just put a big poster up there, it’ll be fine.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Put a poster in front of it or whatever. That just gets worse over time. Like, sure. There may be information we don’t like, but there’s no bad information. Like we’ve got to be organizations that spread even bad news and you know how we react. That was one of the times where I felt like in that case that instance I said was, I feel like, oh like the Lord was with me because actually I responded super well. I said to the guy, I’m like, this is why we bought this building. I’m so glad you had all these students here. You know, let’s get it fixed and and move forward. I did not like paying that bill, but you know, it is, it is what it is, so. But we can’t, if we create organizations that are trying to hide the truth, that are trying to hide information that will erode trust long-term and you move way slower to the speed of trust, you know, information there.

Rich Birch — So pivoting in a in a slightly different direction, but related kind of an adjacent neighborhood of conversation. What are you learning about developing, particularly trust with, or building up team members, younger team members, newer team members at, at One Church? How, what does that look like for you guys? How, how are you, how how does that fit into this whole idea of, you know, building trust with people?

Jeremy Peterson — That’s a great question, Rich, because actually the and we can talk about it if we have time. But the Executive Pastor Summit this year specifically is really about leading up and empowering younger leaders.

Rich Birch — I love it.

Jeremy Peterson —But can I just do a quick jump backwards before?

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jeremy Peterson — Just just maybe this is a bonus thing. Regardless of whether you’ve worked with your lead senior pastor um for the last couple of months or the last 10 years, something that has really changed my heart and my perspective, and I think has really helped grow the relationship, is um it’s just daily be in prayer for him or her. I know that sounds very simple. Until about three years ago I would pray for Bo on a regular basis but it was just kind of like when I thought of it, or on the way to work, or Sunday morning…

Rich Birch — Right. It’s a big thing coming up.

Jeremy Peterson — Yeah, here’s a big thing coming up. But but man the the more we really challenge all of our staff to do this, but I know for myself praying for him, praying for each of his kids by name, know where they’re at in their life, relationships that they’re in, praying for his spouse, and I know he’s doing the same thing. Like I think that that God really takes that, honors that, and he helps kind of build trust through that. And so just an encouragement to some of you if you’re like wrestling with this, if you’re doubting, if you feel like the enemy is getting a foothold is, my encouragement is like, man, just take time every single day to pray for your senior lead pastor. And then I think that’ll make a huge difference. So just want to put that in. So I didn’t forget about, about that on the, on the back end.

Rich Birch — No, that’s so good. That’s a great practical tactic for us around, particularly, you know, you think about the the lead pastor, there was a high percentage of these in this kind of one out of five that were really saying, so it’s 17.89 is the number of people, of executive pastors that said that they feel neutral about their relationship with their lead pastor. And man, we don’t want to feel neutral about this relationship. Like this can’t be like, it’s fine. Like that’s not good. That would be a great takeaway is say, Hey, what if I was going to spend time every day praying for my lead pastor, for what’s going on in their world, for their, you know, for their spouse, for their kids, all of that. I think that’s a great, great takeaway.

Rich Birch — That’s a callback to a previous episode as well. I love, and I know I’ve joked with you about this before when we had you and Bo on talking about multi-site stuff last year, and you know, I asked this question around how do you know the campus versus teams and like the classic multi-site tension. And, um and I’ve retold this story way too many times. And, you know, I’m like, what do you guys do to fix this problem? And then Bo in his wise sort of way rolls out the like, well, you know, I pray every day for every staff member and their, and their family. And I found that that has really helped. And I was like, literally, I was like, Okay. So I’ve been doing this for 20 years, asking that question. Never, never once considered that. So I felt humbled.

Rich Birch — But that’s a great, a great, you know, it’s not just like, and know that’s what I love about you guys. It’s not like you’re not saying that from like, oh, just pray about it. It’s like, no, this, let’s actually add this as a part of our lives and discipline and see what the Lord will do. You know, I think it’s amazing. It’s fantastic.

Jeremy Peterson — Yeah, not to recap the whole thing, but man, like our staff as a whole has been doing that the last four and a half months, Rich. And even the interaction, some of the past frustrations, it’s crazy how much that’s minimized.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeremy Peterson — And just simply praying for, I mean, we spend all this money to go to conferences and all this stuff. And it’s like, hey, how about here’s a printed off name of everybody on staff, their spouse and their kids.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jeremy Peterson — Hey, just take 20 minutes a day and pray for them.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Jeremy Peterson —It’s like, oh yeah, I can I guess Ii can do that as it doesn’t cost much other than some time so. But anyway…

Rich Birch — Well, and you start to see each other as humans, right? At the end of the day.

Jeremy Peterson — Oh yeah.

Rich Birch —And, you know, you start to be like, hey, this person’s like, they’re not just a task that needs to be done or, you know, they’re not just whatever the next problem is that’s going to come up. So, um yeah, that’s a great practical takeaway.

Rich Birch —Well, let’s pivot on that. I want to make sure because I know that you can help leaders on this as well. As we think about younger leaders, what, you know, just ah ask a super wide open, what should we be thinking about? What are you thinking about? What are you wrestling with? Help us wrestle through that. you know, let’s talk about that.

Jeremy Peterson — Yeah, something that’s really been on my heart the last probably year and a half is how do we empower younger leaders? And so I’m not sure who sits around like your, know, your decision making team. But God really put in our hearts several years back to start a residency program and really pour into some of these younger leaders. I know people took a risk on people like you and I, at some point when we were in our twenties and didn’t really know what we’re doing. And we made some dumb things. Like, I think I made multiple holes and multiple walls, which the senior pastor was like very forgiving at the time about it.

Jeremy Peterson — But, but I just love that we get an opportunity to like really pour into invest and actually empower and, um, and and put some trust even behind some of these residents that they’re they’re going from like, okay, I’ve learned these things in school. I have this head knowledge of things, but from a practical standpoint, what does that really look like?

Jeremy Peterson — And so so knowing that we were going to this conversation, I just sat down with one of our first year residents just to kind of hear what their experience has been so far, because I want to hear like the positives, the negatives and kind of what their insight was. But um but a few things that he shared shared with me was like, I love that you guys allow us to fail.

Rich Birch — That’s so good.

Jeremy Peterson — He’s like, I’ve been at other jobs before where it’s like, if something happens to me, if I miss it, then it could be like, hey, you’re going get written up for this. And for us for us, it’s really trying to create that culture of like, you are allowed to fail. You’re allowed to try things. We talk about failing fast and cheap. We hope it doesn’t cost us a lot. But but ultimately, like that’s a safe place in the residency to but to be able to be.

Jeremy Peterson — Another thing he said was, um like I’ve been challenged to say yes to opportunities. And I was like, well, yeah, tell me a little bit more about that. And he’s like, no, usually kind of like you pick and choose. Well, yeah, I want to say yes to this one, but I don’t want to say yes to this. And he’s like, I’m in my early 20s. Why would I not say yes to all these different opportunities? And he’s like, I really want to be scrappy.

Jeremy Peterson — And I’m like, well, tell me more tell me more about that. He’s like, no, I really want to be like more of a utility, like multi-tool staffer. And in my mind, I’m like, OK, I appreciate the the hustle and this younger resident because he’s already talking about like, OK, how do we create a staffing position for him?

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeremy Peterson — But I also think realizing that, you know, he said, if I get an opportunity to preach, I’m going to take the opportunity to preach. If I get the opportunity to host, I to take the opportunity to host. If I don’t have anything that weekend, that I’m going to see if I can serve with our production team and kind of learn the behind the scenes side of things so that I can help with that. Anywhere that’s needed.

Jeremy Peterson — And so I love this idea that they’re willing to say yes, they’re willing to take some risks, knowing that the team believes in them. And so for us, and I think for me specifically, it’s been okay, who do I see being a part of our leadership decision making team in the years ahead?

Jeremy Peterson — And know for, you know, if the average age in the room is like, say, in their mid 40s, like to bring in a early mid 20 year old is it like, wait a second, like, what is this, you know, what is this kid going to say to us? um I think they provide some incredibly fresh perspective…

Rich Birch — 100 percent.

Jeremy Peterson — …on what we’re actually doing well, things that we should do differently, and just ways that we can continue to like really empower them, challenge them, put them in positions that may make them feel uncomfortable. Like we have some that have are like almost deathly afraid of having you know being on stage and talk talking to somebody. But give them an opportunity to to get in there, host, I mean, hosting’s two, three minutes, but get an opportunity to get on stage, just kind of like, you know, put a little fire under them, and and see how they do. And and just watch them grow. And I’m always shocked, and I shouldn’t be shocked because because we’ve been doing the residency for a while, but how many of them not only step up into the challenge, but then actually go beyond our expectations.

Rich Birch — Right. That’s so good. I think this is a critical important critically important for us to lean in on. You know In the last year I’ve been struck, I was with a lot of different churches, and but there were two in particular that stood out to me. These are like prevailing churches, folks that are listening in. If you were listening, they’re like name brand churches. You know these people.

Rich Birch — And the thing that stood out to me was I was having in both of them, I just happened to be having a kind of a meeting with leadership meeting with the folks that were actually operational leaders of a whole bunch of different departments. It was like a kind of a cross section of team leaders. And I was pleasantly surprised with how young that crowd was. Like I looked around the room and I was like, man, these people are all in their late twenties, early thirties. And they’re running departments that are larger than, you know the majority of churches in the country.

Rich Birch — You know they’ve got 15 staff reporting to them. They’re managing multi-million dollars of budgets. And these are prevailing churches. Now, I don’t think that that is a coincidence. I think both of those churches have unlocked something and have realized, wait a second, we have to pass this thing on to the next generation.

Rich Birch — So when you think about the residency, kind of talk to us so about but about the residency program. What does that look like? And how did you get into that? How did that kind of get that ball get rolling? Help us understand. Maybe there’s someone who’s listening in today is thinking, hmm, maybe that’s something, a step we should take in this coming year.

Jeremy Peterson — Yeah, so it was actually a retired baseball player who’s actually going to be at XPS this year. I’m going to do an interview with him. Because now that he’s retired, he’s still coaching, but the like now he’s kind of coaching up the AA and AAA players as they’re coming in and they’re moving up to the major leagues. But he really challenged us because we told him the staffing was one of the biggest challenges, especially in in the New England area. There’s not a lot of people that feel called to be up here this close to Canada, which I know you’re in Canada. But they’re they’re like, maybe if we can be further south, like a little more comfortable.

Jeremy Peterson — But for us, we realized that staffing was a challenge. And for us, he really challenged us to to start a residency. And the residency, it’s either a one or two year residency. And you come on you come in you have two areas of focus. And so it could be, say, worship and production. And you’ll spend six months with each of those areas, really kind of hands-on. And so if you’re showing up here, you’re actually like, you will be on stage leading worship. You will be helping run production, whether it’s for our online service or at one of our outposts. But we really try to give as many hands-on opportunities as possible.

Jeremy Peterson — As somebody who went to seminary, I think I had one class called practical ministry. And it was like, here’s one semester on, you know, how to do weddings, how to do funerals, but not a whole lot of hands-on experience unless I was volunteering at a church. And so for us, it’s really trying to take, hey, here’s some things that I’ve learned, like from a practical standpoint, but like actually let’s just actually see them like, live happening in real time and get an opportunity to be able to see like, Hey, is it something that God’s even really calling me to? And how can I use the gifts that he’s given me to further the kingdom?

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. Love that. Well, we’ve kind of referenced XPS. So XPSummit.org. This is a conference that you are the grand content poobah for. Talk to us about XPS this year. This is to me is a must-attend event. Talk to us about it. and And where is it? All those kind of details this year.

Jeremy Peterson — Yeah, sure. It’s it’s May 4th through 6th in Dallas-Fort Worth. And typically we’ll have 150, 175 executive pastors from different size of churches around the country. And and I appreciate the comment, Rich, but really my goal is to get the people that are there with the content, people like you, and other leaders who really want to come and pour into other executive pastors. And so, yeah, so if you, whether you live in the area or you just want to a day to hang out with some incredible leaders, Rich is going to be there, I’ll be there. And like you said, you can go to xpsummit.org and you can see some of the keynote speakers as well as some of the breakout leaders.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. Well, Jeremy, just as we wrap up today’s episode, bit of a curveball question here. As you think about 2026 at One Church, what’s a question or two that’s on your mind that you’re like, hmm, here’s some stuff that we’re thinking about. it doesn’t have to do with anything we’re talking about today. It could be just anything that you’re thinking about this year. You’re wrestling through thinking, hmm, I wonder what that’s going to look like in this this coming year.

Jeremy Peterson — Man, I was not expecting that question. One thing I’ve been praying about is I think we’re going to start seeing a shift in different parts of the country um where we may have people that are more of like a like a tentmaker role in ministry where um I think there’s an incredible opportunity to do things in like the business sector, but at the same time still work in the church using some of the gifts that God’s empowered you with. And so I can see a shift happening where we have more of the tent making. It’s crazy to me that it’s been like less than a hundred years since the church has actually had like paid full-time staff…

Rich Birch — Right.

Jeremy Peterson — …and not only paid full-time staff, but multiple staff. And so I think I think we could see a shift there. I think a lot of its just to be trying to be, in the words of one of our residents, how to be a little more scrappy, and really looking for staff that is not just focused on one specific area, but somebody who is a utility player that’s like, hey, I can help out in these four or five different areas instead of just being like, I have this one skill set that I can bring. I think those are two things that are going to make a huge impact in the church in 2026.

Rich Birch — That’s great. Thanks so much, Jeremy. I appreciate you being on today. If people want to track with One Church, where do we want to send them online to track with you guys?

Jeremy Peterson — Just go to church.one. Little bit different of a website, but yeah, they can go there and you can find my email address if you want to email me or if we can serve you any way, I know um for for our elders, for Bo, our senior pastor, we love serving the local church as a whole. And so if you’re in the area or if you want to come and hang out with us for a few days, shoot me an email and we’d love to host you guys.

Rich Birch — Great. Thanks so much. Thanks for being here today, sir.

 

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re continuing our special series responding to insights from the National Executive Pastor Survey with an executive pastor from a prevailing church.

Today we’re joined by Eric Garza, Executive Pastor at Cross Church. Cross Church is one of the fastest-growing churches in the country, with 12 campuses across South Texas, serving both English- and Spanish-speaking congregations. In this conversation, Eric helps unpack the number-one fear expressed by executive pastors in the survey: running out of space and not knowing what to do next.

Is your church growing but feeling physically constrained? Are facilities, kids’ space, or parking holding you back from what God may want to do next? Eric offers practical, hard-earned wisdom from leading through rapid multisite expansion.

To learn more about Cross Church, visit crosschurchonline.com or follow @crosschurchrgv on social media. You can also connect with Eric directly on social media at @ericpgarza.

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

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Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Risepointe

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

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

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

Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. We are in the middle of, in the in the midst of, is maybe a better way to say, these special set of podcasts where we’re responding to what you said in the National Executive Pastor Survey, which turned out to be the largest dedicated or direct executive pastor survey that we’re aware of ever, which is kind of cool. And hundreds of people were you know, logged in and told, gave us a sense of where ministry is at. And what we’ve been doing is spending time with an executive pastor from a prevailing church, and frankly, people I like, to get their ah thoughts on kind of what was surfaced.

Rich Birch — And today we’ve got a big one. This is a significant issue. In fact, it was the single biggest fear that was expressed. We asked a question around, what’s your kind of biggest fear for this year? And nearly one in five executive pastors expressed fear about this. And what is that fear? It’s the whole issue of our facilities, space, capital projects, that sort of thing. Many churches are running out of kids space, parking, seating, lobby capacity.

Rich Birch — You know, we’re all worried about in inflation of construction costs. If you got a building quoted on five years ago, you’re going to want to get it quoted on again, you know, renovation, building, all of this stuff. And, you know, we’re excited to have ah today a return guest, Eric Garza with us. He is from a fantastic church, Cross Church, which is located in Texas. It’s one of the fastest growing churches of ah in the country, and they have 12 campuses, if I’m counting correctly. So Eric has thought about facilities and so excited to have you back on the show, Eric. Thanks for being here.

Eric Garza — Rich, thanks for having me back. Good to have an opportunity to have a great conversation about a big topic for a lot of pastors and executives across the country. Yeah.

Rich Birch — Well, you’re going to solve all our problems for us today, Eric. So.

Eric Garza — It’s just some nuggets of what I’ve learned and experienced. But if I can make your life and your world a little bit better, awesome.

Rich Birch — That’s great. That’s good. Kind of tell us a little bit about Cross again, kind of set the context, you know, give us a bit of sense of the the church.

Eric Garza — Yeah, so we’re in deep south Texas. Most of our campuses are within a half hour north of the US-Mexico border. So right at the bottom of the tip of Texas. 30 years going on 31 years as a ministry. In the last eight years, we went from one site ah to now seven locations, physical locations and 12 campuses.

Eric Garza — We’re a bilingual ministry, which means we do we have English campuses and we have Spanish campuses. And we recently, last year in 2025, launched our first campus outside of our region in San Antonio, Texas.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Eric Garza — And you can imagine a lot of ah victories and a lot of challenges, ah you know leaving your space, your comfort area, the region where you’ve been, for 30 years and then heading out and venturing off into what we believe God called us to do in in Central Texas.

Eric Garza — So ah just phenomenal growth. We’ve seen God’s hand up on our ministry and it’s come with, ah like I said, a lot of wins and a lot of challenges we’ve had to navigate. And being a a predominantly Hispanic ministry that reaches both English congregants and Spanish congregants, dealing with cultural, political issues in our region of the country ah has just been a whirlwind. But as anybody could imagine, it’s been a big learning season for us for expansion. You know, I know we’re talking about facilities going from one side to multisite and all of that that entails operationally, logistically, financially. So I wouldn’t say we know it all. We certainly don’t if we’re always learning. But man, if if we can just impart any wisdom, we’re we’re all for that.

Rich Birch — Love it. Well, I would say I actually re-looked at a lot of these fears. And the overall tone, if you were to kind of summarize the the conversation that people seem to be expressing is like, there’s this sense from a lot of executive pastors, listen, our ministry could grow, but our space, frankly, is holding us back. And we’re not entirely sure what the path forward is. It’s like, we we see the physical space issues, but I’m not sure where to go from here. So I’d love to jump right in.

Eric Garza — Sure.

Rich Birch — How have you, as you’ve looked at your seven physical locations, 12 campuses, how do you evaluate facility limitations? And are they the things that are actually restricting growth or does the issue lie somewhere else? How do you, how are you discerning that when you look at, you know, this, this whole issue?

Eric Garza — Yeah, a lot of our of our growth has come from us planting campuses, but some of our growth has come from, I guess, what the corporate world calls mergers and acquisitions, where we’ve merged or really acquired other ministries who either had an existing facility that we took over. Or where we partnered with them through the acquisition and launched a campus in a new building or a new facility.

Eric Garza — So some of the things that we’ve done is, there’s a whole process, right, that that it’s entailed with going multisite. And one of those big key indicators of whether the campus or the church plant is going to succeed is whether they have a sustainable facility that can house all aspects of the ministry. And sometimes that can be difficult to find.

Eric Garza — For example, you don’t just want meeting space to have services, right? You need maybe an office space, you need childcare space, you need a meeting space, you need lobby, restrooms, you need adequate parking. And all of those factors come into play when you’re looking to find the right spaces. So for us, We’ve just been blessed that ah either we’ve have you know gone through the capital campaigns, we’ve gone through the funding, the you know internal funding to build new facilities, or the acquisition that we’ve ah done over the last couple of years already had an existing facility, which is a plus. Because instead of building, we just went into a remodel phase to bring that building up to what we would call our Cross-standard to house our campus and facility. And so I mean it’s It’s a holistic approach.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.

Eric Garza — You look at parking, kids space. What you don’t want to do and what what we’ve run into in the past, is it’s okay to to launch with limited space, but if you’re launching and you already have a couple of hundred people that are gathered, you’re going to want to find a space that’s going to give you ample room to have one or two services without having to crunch yourself in the short term. And it’s going to, in in in a larger sense, going to really facilitate some challenge and some angst and frustrations early on. And you want to minimize as much of that, especially when you’re when you’re launching and you’re setting out to start a new campus or a new church.

Rich Birch — Yeah, so that’s one of those kind of pinch points would be too small, right? Like I’m assuming you’ve ended up in facilities where it’s like, okay, this is this just frankly is too small.

Eric Garza — It’s not going to work.

Rich Birch — And so we’ve got to, it’s not going to work. We’re going have to start with three services and that, you know, or something like that. Or we’ll start with two and we’ll be pinched too quickly. Are there any other kind of tripwires that you’ve run into that are like, oh, like it might be great on these five things, but this, these, if it’s not these two or three, if these aren’t right, we were not going in there. Are there any other things to get to, as you said, a sustainable facility? Are there any kind of big no-nos that you’ve bumped into, or maybe you wish you knew before? Yeah. Tell me about that.

Eric Garza — Yeah, a couple of things. Number one is don’t ah start a church next to the railroad tracks. That may sound a little funny.

Rich Birch — No, tell me more.

Eric Garza — You never know that during your Sunday morning message at your 10 o’clock service, roughly about 10:40 a.m., this train…

Rich Birch — Oh, gosh.

Eric Garza — …who’s two or three blocks away is going to come blaring out ah and just completely disrupt your sound and and your service and your message for a few minutes. So it may sound comical, but ah yeah, definitely don’t do that. Right.

Rich Birch — No, that’s very good.

Eric Garza — Yeah.

Rich Birch — That’s well, and even going and seeing, that’s a great takeaway because even going and seeing the facility during a Sunday morning, like, cause you wouldn’t know that if you’re there to just Tuesday afternoon or something, you would have no sense of that.

Eric Garza — Yeah.

Rich Birch — But, but cause it might be a train, but there’s, I could see lots of things where.

Eric Garza — Trains are not confined to Monday through Friday.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Eric Garza — They’re there every day as they need. And so you just you just never know. That has to happen a couple of times, and it’s incredibly frustrating.

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

Eric Garza — And so you play it off the middle of the service, but man, it can it can mess it could mess with some stuff. The second thing I would say is is this when looking for a facility. There’s obviously some innate some internal perhaps pressure or self-imposed pressure as a pastor or an executive to want to get into a permanent facility right away.

Eric Garza — One of the things that helped us early on with with a couple of our campuses is we actually rented. And here’s the benefit of renting or leasing, even for a year or two, as you grow that site is number one, you’re not worried about insurance, right? You’re not worried about lawsuits. You’re not worried about maintenance or you’re paying for that, right? But there’s a lot that you minimize when it comes to overloading your mind and your brain about what you have to handle.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Eric Garza — Alright. And so you pay a fee, but the building’s clean when you come in. And right after you set, you know, you tear down your equipment for the service in your kids area, you don’t have to worry about that because you’re leasing a space.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Eric Garza — And so if you can minimize, like I said, as much of the overload of operations and facilities on the front end, that’s that’s a great a great thing. And most spaces, right, what we did early on is if we had an event center where we would rent the main auditorium uh we would use conference rooms or or multi-purpose room for child care. We would safe proof them, right – all of our protocols in place. But that’s what we would do early on, and it would give us a chance to test and gather some data.

Rich Birch — That’s so good.

Eric Garza — Is this going to work long term? Right. Number one, we don’t believe we missed God. But if after a couple of years, this isn’t going anywhere. Well, thank God we didn’t buy a building…

Rich Birch — Right.

Eric Garza — …because now we’re you know up a creek without a paddle, as they say. And so leasing is not is not an entirely bad idea on the early outset.

Rich Birch — No, that’s great.

Eric Garza — But definitely the neighborhood that you’re in, right beside the town that you’re in, you want to be in a centrally as centrally as you can, centrally located as you can, and and not next to a railroad track or any industry or warehouses where there’s going to be trucks, just for safety concerns, for the curbside appeal. And so that’s why public libraries or where we had actually launched started campuses was at a public library – acoustic set because we couldn’t be so loud. So all of those facility concerns are are really things you want to keep in mind.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. I love the idea of the rental on the front end. What a great way to, it’s good use of capital. It’s a good, you know, it it gives you a chance to test…

Eric Garza — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …even if you stay for a couple of years, that’s, you know, that’s fantastic. So you’ve been through multiple, you know, capital campaigns, this whole process of like, we’ve got to raise money and then get a facility renovated or, you know, you know, expanded or whatever.

Rich Birch — What, what do you wish you would have known before all that? Well, are there a couple like things that either, you know, you stumbled upon, you stubbed your toe or you wish, man, I wish somebody would have told me this. Are there any things that stand out to you?

Eric Garza — Number, I think the first one is this. You have an you have a number in your mind, and you of course you believe God for it. It…

Rich Birch — And it’s lower. It’s going to come in lower every time.

Eric Garza — …it is. Every single, unless God does a miracle, which he is more than able to do…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Eric Garza — …it’s going to come in lower. And so I think have have high anticipation but realistic expectations…

Rich Birch — Right.

Eric Garza — …because most capital campaigns are campaigns that are above normal giving.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Okay. Yep.

Eric Garza — Right. And so at least for us, it’s above normal giving.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Eric Garza — We encourage and we get people to give towards a specific capital campaign, which is for a specific campus or a specific project or or what have you. But you have this number in mind and then if you can tend to early on. It’s not coming in yet. Or maybe you’ve done it for a year or give a specific timeline.

Rich Birch — I see. Okay. Yep.

Eric Garza — And you can get quickly discouraged, especially with capital campaigns where you’re like, we’re halfway through this thing and not even half has come in yet, or of what we thought would come in. And so it’s easier to get discouraged. But that was a big thing is that number in your mind, it’s going to be lower. And that’s not a bad thing. Right. That’s not a bad thing.

Eric Garza — People are giving to a capital campaign above giving of their normal giving, sacrificially, they’re giving by faith. They’re giving with expectation. But at the same time, for those of us on the inside, right, those of us who are managing the resources and what have you, it’s it’s about having a realistic expectation that we have the faith that God can do it. But we’re all going to budget ourselves knowing that if there’s a high probability, not impossible, there’s a high probability that the number we had in mind, is not going to be what comes in for the capital campaign.

Rich Birch — Let’s talk about that there. So there’s an interesting, um so I’ve seen that for sure in churches. There’s an interesting kind of tension that pulls in two different directions. One, you can have exactly what you’re talking about, which is, you know, we thought we would go in, we we were hoping we would raise X and we raised something less than that.

Eric Garza — Yeah.

Rich Birch — But then the other part of it is we were hoping the project was going to cost X and it costs X plus, you know, it’s costing us more than, than we anticipated. How do you manage that tension? How have you been able to kind of navigate that? That’s a, that’s a tough tension.

Eric Garza — Yeah, the longevity of the capital campaign is gonna is not always going to be exactly match, it’s not going, rather, to exactly match what the building construction cost was at the beginning. Prices fluctuate and prices change.

Eric Garza — And so let’s say you have let’s use so a rough even number, a million dollar capital campaign for your church organization. And the construction is going to cost, I don’t know, $900,000, $950,000. Well, a million dollars should cover it. But by the time a million dollars or shortly or short of that comes in, well, your budget is now at 1.2 or 1.3.

Rich Birch — Right.

Eric Garza — It’s fluctuated. And so the what’s congruent at the beginning can be really a little bit financially off by the time that can…In other words, the timelines of the capital campaign and your building projects sometimes don’t align perfectly. And we’ve run into that too, where we’ve had to take from our operating budget a little bit, or we’ve had to really emphasize a certain amount during the campaign, because that’s what needs to come in. We’ve you know met with with key givers and donors of the church. And those are challenges that you navigate ah during the capital campaign process.

Rich Birch — Sure.

Eric Garza — And and like I said earlier, it’s it’s challenging because, well, let me backtrack and say this.

Eric Garza — This is why on the front end, you should add margin into your capital campaign…

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Eric Garza — …which we didn’t do that, perhaps the first go around. But certainly the later ah seasons, we added margin in our capital campaigns to account for any fluctuation in construction costs. And if there was ever in a surplus, well, we would tell the church it’s because of your giving and because of your support and generosity that we had more than enough come in.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Eric Garza — And so now we’re going to use those funds for X or they’re going to go back to the general fund or or whatever whatever the case. But I think that the key that would be to incorporate some 10 to 15% margin in your capital campaign on the outset to account for anything that might happen 12, 15, 18 months down the road.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s really good. That’s good. You maybe just saved somebody a lot of headache two years from now…

Eric Garza — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …because of that part of the conversation. I want to go back to something you talked about earlier. You’ve had multiple buildings that you’ve acquired or you’ve merged with, and you were talking about remodeling and there’s like, that can be a blessing and a curse. Like it can be amazing. Like, wow, this is great. And…

Eric Garza — You never know what you’re going to find.

Rich Birch — …you know, you open up, you open up a wall and who knows what’s behind that wall. And, you know, there’s all that. And you talked about bringing it up to the Cross standard. Talk me through what how have you decided what that is? What is the Cross standard? And how do you what are the common things that you find, Oh, we’ve got to make this change. And how have you kind of defined that as you think about projects like that?

Eric Garza — Yeah, so over the last few years, we’ve pretty much honed in on, I guess, the vibe and the look of what we want our campuses to to feel and look like.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Eric Garza — They may be different ah floor plans because some of them we built, some of them we acquired, properties we took over. But as far as color schemes, we do our very best to match wall colors, sanctuary colors. We use the same stage equipment, both branding and layout as best as possible across all of our sanctuary auditoriums, our stages.

Eric Garza — Our kids spaces, ah we have an internal ratio of how many teachers or volunteers per infants, per toddlers, for school-age children we want. And so that determines our spacing. And so sometimes we’ve got to knock some walls down or build some walls in to accommodate for for what, like I said, our standard of ministry, both in appeal, but also in care for for our congregants and for our families.

Eric Garza — And so when we remodel, you’re right, there’s some things that once you knock down a wall, you’re not going to know until you knock it down. And that’s where that, you know, that margin comes in. But for the most part, right, we’ve had we do inspections, we get we get third party opinions on the building, on the cost estimates, and like we would encourage anybody to do, right.

Eric Garza — But that’s our Cross standard is the look, the feel, the equipment, the wall colors, you know is there enough space for our our guests, connect area, our next steps area for first impressions. Does every ministry have adequate space to store their items – all of those factors come into play in deciding how we’re going to remodel a facility.

Eric Garza — And I’ll say the second thing is this is why before you break or before you knock down a wall, get an inspector or or get some people either in your church or in the construction industry or somebody that you know in in your community. Because sometimes when you have a building, your initial thought is to remodel. That may not always be the most financial financially wise decision. And here’s why. Because you may not know all that you’re going to encounter, you may in the long run end up spending just as much as if you had built a brand new facility with the exact floor plan you want.

Eric Garza — And so that’s where you’re evaluating and deciding, is it more feasible to remodel this building for X amount of dollars? Or are we within 5% to 10% budget margin, where we might just say it’s it’s in the best interest of the church perhaps to use either this facility as collateral for our next building or a brand new building, or is it better to use it a multisite building, excuse me, multi-purpose building, and we end up building a new facility…

Rich Birch — Right.

Eric Garza — …for the church or for the campus. And so those cost estimates are going to help you make the best, most informed decision of where you’re going to steward the resources financially in either remodeling or in building a site.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. One of my favorite churches, Mercy Hill Church in North Carolina, they they had a building that was given to them and they did, they weren’t entirely sure what to kind of, it was in a part of town, they weren’t necessarily sure they wanted to launch a campus and just they had a campus closer and all that. And they ended up using it turned it into a really a student center and it’s a fantastic ministry building and it’s active, you know, five, six days a week.

Rich Birch — Now they don’t do Sunday morning services there, but they do all kinds of other stuff, which is fantastic. Like is a great, you know…

Eric Garza — And we’ve seen that too. Yeah. They use for leadership meetings, for small chapel receptions…

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Eric Garza — …or gatherings or next gen events, youth, young adults, even renting it out to the community as a means to supply income to the church…

Rich Birch — Yep. Yep. On a daycare or something.

Eric Garza — …to like, you know aligned organizations, of course, whatever your church policy is. But yeah, sometimes the best use of that building is not for church services.

Rich Birch — Have you, have you run into facilities that you’ve evaluated and then decided, no like this is going to cost way too much to renovate and we’re, so we won’t go forward with it. Have you run into that after evaluation?

Eric Garza — Well, not entirely, but I’ll say this…recent…

Rich Birch — I know that risk is there for sure.

Eric Garza — Yeah, there is risk. There is risk. And the risk assessment is different when you’re leasing a space or remodel…

Rich Birch — Right.

Eric Garza — …and when you’re when you’re obviously building your own facility, as far as and including the costs associated with that. One of our campuses recently, and I mean in the last 24 months, before we moved into our new building was leasing a space and we were given the option to remodel the space we were leasing. Because though it was suitable for what we needed for the ministry, for Sunday services and and all the other ministries, parts of it were not really conducive to growth for the congregation and for the ministry.

Eric Garza — So we did contemplate remodeling. I think I think what kept us from doing that number one is whatever you remodel for the landlord the landlord is going up keeping. And so the return on that investment would be short term and not long term, We were already in the midst of building our building but we were growing at a rapid rate, and so we were eight, twelve months out from from being in our building and the campus was growing, and so we needed a short-term solution.

Rich Birch — Right.

Eric Garza — So we did think, Well, we’ll spend X amount of dollars to remodel our site where we’re leasing before we get into the new building. But we found out that shifting our service times and and doing different different strategies ended up alleviating in the short term the constraints we had to give us a time to get into our new building, which is now more than enough space for us to grow for for years and years to come.

Rich Birch — Right. That’s cool. Yeah. Cause I’ve said as a, I feel like I’ve been in a ton of conversations with XPs where, you know, they’re talking about this issue and you know, there’s like a building that they’re, maybe it’s another church that’s come to them and they’re having a conversation and they’re, I would say their mindset is like, I’m not sure we should do this. Like this is, they’re like, this other church came to us and statistically, actually the most likely for these mergers to succeed are when the joining church comes to the lead church.

Eric Garza — Yeah.

Rich Birch — So they would come to your church and be like, Hey, we’re interested. So it actually happens a fair amount. And I’ve, I feel like I’ve talked, tried to talk so many executive pastors into like, man, it’s gotta be a really bad building. If particularly if it’s like has debt or has no debt or very little debt on it, it’s gotta be a very bad building to not want to take it. Cause it’s like, you know, you can, you can take, invest, you know, a moderate amount of money. You don’t need to dump a ton into it and get something great. And like you said, as long as you’re above board with everybody, you know, five years from now, if it doesn’t work, you could take that asset, sell it and move on and use those resources somewhere else.

Eric Garza — And that’s very good because when you talk about acquiring a ministry, especially if it has a low balance on their mortgage or or they don’t have much to pay off the building, and if you’re in a position to pay that off within the first year of acquiring the ministry…

Rich Birch — Right.

Eric Garza — …think of a collateral and the equity that your organization now has because of that new facility that’s in your portfolio.

Rich Birch — 100%.

Eric Garza — And I know it sounds very business-minded, but when you’re looking to expand into the future, even at another site in your church ministry organization, you now have more collateral, more resources to leverage for a better financial position in the future when you do want to actually build a building.

Eric Garza — And the second thing is this, if you’re acquiring a ministry that already has an existing building, in most cases, it’s already built out for church purposes. So that’s very helpful. So at that point, you may be putting in a smaller amount and just…

Rich Birch — Right.

Eric Garza — …you know, refurbishing it, painting the walls, putting some new equipment, some new screens, maybe be changing out the flooring a little bit, or some of the fixtures in different spaces…

Rich Birch — There’s technology or whatever, yep.

Eric Garza — …because it’s already built out for a church. And so that’s the benefit of going or acquiring in a ministry if you’re going that route that already has an existing facility.

Rich Birch — Yeah, we had, ah we were running, our budget was about $8 million dollars and we were, we had a church come to us and they were, they had really, they had had a tough season and the summer before we ended up merging with them or they joined us really, they had multiple Sundays where they had two people show up on Sunday. They had the person that was preaching and the guy that was opening the door, like it was, it had really atrophied down.

Rich Birch — And I remember in one of those conversations, they had had a bit of a roof problem. The facility was worth just probably south of 2 million. It was like ah a great facility, but they had a roof problem. And I remember one of the the elders leader person, he said, you know, we we got a quote on the roof and it’s it’s going to cost maybe about $15,000 to fix. Do you think you guys will be able to fix that? And they had no debt and were going to give us their building.

Rich Birch — Well, like I humbly had to say like, like, yeah, we’ll we’ll be okay. Like, it’s gonna it’s gonna be fine. Like, you know, I what I didn’t want to say is like, I feel like our youth guys have like wasted $15,000 this year. Like, you know, like it’s like we can, you know, the exchange just on paper. And again, that’s not why you go into those conversations.

Eric Garza — Of course.

Rich Birch — But a part of that is, particularly in our seats as executive pastors, that’s a part of what we have to wrestle through and think about those things. So let’s get back to the renovation thing. A lot of what churches were talking about is like, pressure of like, man, I just, our physical facilities are, are holding us back.

Rich Birch — Any other thoughts around, you know, changes you’ve made to increase capacity or, um you know, things that maybe are like some low hanging fruit or creative solutions that have that, that maybe we’re not thinking about, but as a leader who’s been through this, you know, you’ve been, you’ve wrestled through that, that we, we could, you know, benefit from.

Eric Garza — Yeah, absolutely. A couple of things. You can please everybody, right?

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Eric Garza — And so I think one of the ministry pressures well, we want to please the next gen. We also want to please the child care. We also want to please the elders of the church. And we also want to please the younger families of the church and young professionals. And when you’re when you’re in a facility that wasn’t originally built according to your specs, it’s going to be difficult to do that.

Eric Garza — And so you have to focus, as we have, on the most critical areas, sanctuary and child care. If you don’t have child care, it’s going to be a barrier to growth because families or parents are not going to have the comfort level they need to come to your church on a regular basis and to be a part of the community. And so for us, when we’ve remodeled, the first things we look at are sanctuary and then the kid space. Do we have enough adequate kids space?

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Eric Garza — Some of the solutions when we’ve been limited in space is is launching multiple services to we have a smaller sanctuary or a smaller space, we’ll offer more service opportunities. Or when it comes to our kids ministry, we’ve evaluated with our kids directors and our our kids department of how can we best merge age groups to maximize the space that we have. So if you have right an ideal facility where you have you know your child your child care divided by grade level or age level, sometimes you have the amenity to do that and many times you don’t. And so what we’ve done is instead of having first grade on their own, maybe we’ll put you know kindergarten and first grade level kids together.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Eric Garza — We’ll put second and third together, fourth and fifth together as a way to consolidate because we don’t have the space that we prefer to have, at least in this season. And so for us, sometimes you’re not watering down in essence, the content, the quality, but you are consolidating in the short term or even medium term…

Rich Birch — Right.

Eric Garza — …if you will, if that’s even a term, to make adequate space for the constraints that you may have.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Eric Garza — And so you have 600 members and you only have 200-seat sanctuary, 250. Well, that’s an opportunity for three services.

Rich Birch — Right.

Eric Garza — Is that is that is that Is that a strain? Well, it can be if you see it from core perspective versus a perspective of, Man, we’re so large and we have the space. You know, one of our core values at our church is excellence. And we’ve defined excellence as not having the best, but doing the best with what you have.

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.

Eric Garza — So we may not have a thousand seat auditorium for this growing congregation, but what we do have, we’re going utilize it and steward it to our best ability. So if that means two or three services, well, God give us the strength and the people to manage and to lead and to execute three strong services every weekend, or every Sunday, in order to meet the need of the congregation that we have.

Eric Garza — And and I think one of the biggest things, Rich, is also communicating this. It’s keeping them current, right. You’re not going to go into all the details per se, unless that’s your preference and that’s your senior pastor’s prerogative. But to share with them the overarching theme of, hey, here’s where we’re at as a ministry. Here’s our facility. And here’s what we’re going to do to continue to offer as best a ministry as we can, while at the same time being cognizant of the challenges that we’re facing.

Eric Garza — We said this to our staff and to our church many times, is we don’t look at obstacles as negatives. We look at obstacles as opportunities. Okay.

Rich Birch — That’s so true.

Eric Garza — If this is what we have, how can we be as excellent as possible with what we have? If that means going to a third service, well, then we’re going to give it a shot because what we don’t want to do is allow facility constraints to translate into diminished capacity or into a diminishing congregation and I’m talking about numerically. Because the diminishing congregation numerically also means a diminishing budget and revenue financially because you have less givers in the seats. And that’s those are some of the challenges that you got navigate so we don’t see it as obstacles. We don’t see obstacles necessarily as a challenge we see that’s an opportunity of okay how can we navigate around this mountain if you will to continue to provide as excellent a ministry as we can.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. I love your example of the kids age size rooms. Because I think you’ve you’re articulating a tension that whenever we’re, particularly for launching we talked a lot about this, like renovating other spaces and new campuses and all that, where I think really is germane to our job as executive pastor to to manage this tension of we want it feel, you know, the language you used was Cross standard. It’s absolutely has got to be Cross standard, but there will be areas where we’re going to have to compromise. Like that is just true. And a part of what we have to do, we have to use our leadership and our discernment and, you know, get the right players in the room and have the conversation. And, you know, somebody using your example, somebody kids’ ministry to be like, no, we can’t combine them together. That’ll be terrible. And it’s like, we’re going to be fine. Like, we’ll figure it out, you know.

Eric Garza — Yeah [inaudible].

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s going to be okay. We’ll we’ll help that navigate. And that’s one example, but there’s a ton of those that can come up in these, you know, in these renovations for sure.

Eric Garza — Yeah, absolutely.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Eric Garza — and And people are always going to have opinions.

Rich Birch — Right.

Eric Garza — But I’ll say this from experience. And I mean, no ill intent towards anybody in your congregation or your ministry.

Rich Birch — No.

Eric Garza — Most of the people that are criticizing are the people that aren’t giving anyway. And so I’m not saying ignore them by any means. They’re part of your part of your ecosystem. They’re part of your church, they’re part of your flock.

Rich Birch — Yep. That’s very true.

Eric Garza — But it’s always with a grain of salt because the people that are really bought into your ministry are going to walk through those opportunities alongside you, ah hopefully with the best attitude that they possibly can muster up because this too shall pass.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Eric Garza — Right.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Eric Garza — If you’ve gone out in faith to plant or to grow or to expand your congregation, this is a temporary season. It’s not a permanent season. You won’t always be at three or four services, right? Or multiple services.

Eric Garza — At some point, if God is in this and you really believe He is, and I believe He is for many organizations and ministries, the timing will be right when you have a facility that can house what you need, or that can provide the amenities and space that you need. And so for parents, for givers, for guests, it is just letting them know as best you can, even subtly through announcements or even messages and say, hey, we’re in a season of growth and expansion. \ Growth doesn’t always look you know perfect. And so we have seasons where we’re going to navigate some some challenges and opportunities as best we can to get us to an end goal.

Eric Garza — This is a means to an end. What we’re going through is a means to get us to where we want to go as a ministry. And as long as you keep it at the forefront, tying it into the vision of the house, you’re going to see that in a large sense, you’re going to have people rally behind that idea and unfocused, if you will, from the constraints of their of the facility to the broader appeal of what God is doing in the ministry.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that is so good. Friends, you should go back and re-listen to what Eric just said there. That is some wise advice. And obviously from somebody that’s been in the trenches a lot, that’s been my experience as well. The people, the complainers, I’m reading through the book of Job right now. And I’m like, man, his friends are just like, this guy needs better friends.

Eric Garza — Yeah.

Rich Birch — And that that reminded me of the people you’re talking about. Like…

Eric Garza — Yeah.

Rich Birch — You know, there’s these people who are just, you know, sniping from the cheap seats and they’re not really engaged in the mission where, man, those people that are right on in the middle of it, they’re like, let’s go, let’s lean in.

Rich Birch — And man, that’s the kind of person, I’m hoping as I transition into older age that I’m that person, you know, because we have a number of those people at our church that I look at that are like, these are incredible saints who have seen so much change. And who I’m sure lots of things annoy them, but they’re fired up for the mission. They’re excited in our case to reach unchurched people, to see people who far from Jesus connected.

Eric Garza — If you’re not changing, you’re not making progress, right?

Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely.

And the fact you the fact that your ministry is facing opportunities or obstacles rather disguised as opportunities is proof positive you’re going somewhere.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Eric Garza — You’re not a stagnant ministry. You’re not a you’re not a lazy ministry, right? You’re not apathetic. You’re really out in the field of vision that God has given you or to your senior leadership. And so it’s proof positive, right? And so take that as an badge of honor in some way to say, we must be doing something right.

Rich Birch — So good. Well, Eric, just as we’re coming to kind of land, this has been a great conversation, hopefully been helpful for you, friends, as you’ve have been listening in. But as we kind of come to land today’s conversation, what’s a question or two that that you’re kicking around for this year at at Cross as you’re thinking about 2026? Where’s your head at? What are the things you’re wondering? It doesn’t have to be about this, could be anything.

Eric Garza — Yeah, well, ah thanks for letting me speak into that, Rich. I think for me as an executive and looking at our ministry, you know, looking at the previous 30 years and looking at the next decade, if you will, of where God is going to take our ministry, being one of America’s fastest growing churches, being the largest bilingual Hispanic-led ministry in the country. We’ve, you know, like I’ve said in a previous episode with you, we haven’t had any precedent for us in our context. And so we’ve navigated a lot of uncharted waters and learned from both wins and losses and different opportunities and struggles to get us to where we’re at now.

Eric Garza — I think one of the biggest questions facing the church at large in 2026 is how the church is going to respond to the ever increasingly fast-paced changes that we’re seeing on the political front, on the cultural front. I’m not saying that the church has to be a political response. The church has to be, has to provide a biblical response to what we’re seeing.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Eric Garza — And with the fast paced nature of culture and society and trends, I don’t believe it’s the church’s responsibility to respond to every trend or to everything, but certainly the overarching elements of our current culture and political dynamic where there is a biblical either mandate or precedent for it, that the church would speak it into that and provide biblical perspective…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Eric Garza — …and and and wisdom for how people should think about certain topics that have a biblical or moral prerogative. And so navigating that as an organization, because as a growing church and being such a large ministry, if you can imagine the opinions. We have people in our church who are conservative and who some who are not. We have people who belong to one political party over another. We’re in multiple communities. And so different communities have different demographics, different cultural contexts, different policy initiatives. There’s a lot going on.

Eric Garza — And as a church ministry, especially as that we’re multisite, one of the biggest questions I’m asking myself and our team is how do we, number one, stay biblically founded, right? And unwavering in what the biblical standard is.

Eric Garza — Number two is how do we address the different things and different occurrences in different communities that we’re in? If we were just one site and one community, well, then we would just be I guess you could say in our own little space and our own little focus. But we have multisites, so we have multi-focus, if you will, at how we continue to provide as excellent a ministry as possible…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Eric Garza — …keeping Jesus at the forefront, above the fray, and at the same time, giving a biblical perspective so that people have the right biblical worldview for how to walk out their journey of faith their relationship with Christ, but at the same time, how to respond to what’s happening in our world. I think for many times, for for many years, really for decades, the church has abdicated its biblical responsibility, if you will, to speak into things, not from a political perspective, but from a biblical perspective.

Eric Garza — And because that abdication of responsibility we’ve seen a lot of things that have happened. Thankfully, in recent seasons, in recent years, we’ve seen a a shift where faith is now at the forefront. And so though I have that question, my biggest, I guess you could say prerogative is to leverage that people are focused more on faith, that people are open to faith now more so in our country, that people are focused more on this person of Jesus and is to leverage that as an opportunity to really hone in and speak into people’s hearts and minds and into the different communities that we’re in so that they have the right biblical perspective, the biblical worldview to carry out what God has enabled them or called them to do.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I love I love what you’re saying there. And you know I know had a friend say, you know if you’re, you know, we we all are serving in a context. We serve in a particular time, in a particular cultural context, and God’s called us to lead in that context. And if you’re not feeling the pull from, you know, multiple sides, multiple polarities, you’re like, well, everybody here agrees with me then it means you’re not actually reaching your community, you know. And the fact that you’re feeling that tension means, okay, like there’s there’s people from a wide variety of, and it can be all different political is one, but there’s lots of different ways to think of that.

Eric Garza — Yeah.

Rich Birch — And yeah, that’s that’s so true. I really appreciate this. Well, Eric, you’re you’re a blessing to us. I thank you so much for for giving us time today and helping us think about these things as we kick off into 2026. If where do we want to send people if they want to track with you or with the church?

Rich Birch — How do we how do we want to get people connected to Cross?

Eric Garza — Yeah, well, Rich, thanks for the opportunity. And it’s what a blessing for us and for me personally to be able to just share some thoughts. And if it helps anybody, well, praise God for that. I think if you want to follow the church, we’re crosschurchonline.com or crosschurchrgv on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, all of, you know, most of the social media platforms.

Eric Garza — If you want to connect with me, I’d be happy to connect with you at Eric, E-R-I-C-P Garza on any of social media platforms. It’d be a h privilege for me to help you guys and to share some thoughts and even answer questions. I’d be more than happy to do that. If I can serve your ministries in any way, by all means, feel free to reach out to me on any of the social media platforms.

Rich Birch — Nice. Thanks so much, Eric. Really appreciate being here today, sir. Thank you.

Eric Garza — Thank you, man. God bless. Appreciate it.

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re sitting down with an executive pastor from a prevailing church to unpack what leaders like you shared in the National Executive Pastor Survey so you can lead forward with clarity.

In today’s episode, we’re joined by Kayra Montañez, Executive Pastor at Liquid Church in New Jersey. Liquid is a fast-growing multisite church with six campuses stretching from Princeton to communities just outside New York City. In this conversation, Kayra helps unpack one of the biggest concerns surfaced in the National Executive Pastor Survey: the growing gap between attendance and engagement. While many churches are seeing people return, far fewer leaders feel confident that those people are truly connected, discipled, and serving.

Is your church seeing full rooms but thin volunteer pipelines? Are you unsure how engaged people really are beyond weekend services? Kayra offers practical insight into why that gap exists—and what churches can do to close it.

To learn more about Liquid Church, visit liquidchurch.com, or connect with Kayra directly via email.

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. We’ve got a special episode on today where we’re diving into some of the results from the National Executive Pastor Survey. And today we’re super excited to have Kayra Montañez with us from Liquid Church in New Jersey.

Rich Birch — And today we’re talking all about engagement. One of the things that jumped out, well, one of the top tier results, kind of concerns that came out, 10% of executive pastors in the open questions, expressed fear around discipleship death depth and volunteer sustainability. At the same time, nearly 12% said they lacked really visibility into participation and involvement data. Another 6% pointed specifically to volunteer and team metrics really being an unmet need, not knowing where they are.

Rich Birch — So what does that all that mean? Roughly one in five executive pastors are entering 2026 this year, wondering really how engaged their churches are. And Kayra is going to solve all that for us. So Kayra, welcome to the show. Tell us about Liquid. Tell us a little bit about the church.

Kayra Montañez — Well I appreciate the vote of confidence but I’m not sure about that. But, Rich, it’s always so great to be with you and to be a guest on your podcast. Thank you so much for having me. So yes, we are in New Jersey. So our church is called Liquid. I get the incredible privilege of serving there as one of two executive pastors. And we are a multisite church. We have six campuses. If you and know anything about New Jersey, one of them is the furthest one is in Princeton, New Jersey – a lot of people know Princeton.

Kayra Montañez — And then probably the closest one that we have up north is closest to New York City, about 30 minutes from the city. So that kind of gives you the breadth and width of how we’re trying to saturate the state of New Jersey with the gospel of Jesus Christ. That is our mission.

Rich Birch — So good. And Kayra, I really appreciate you jumping in on on today’s conversation, particularly in this area, because I think, man, have so much to offer. You know, so many of our churches, we feel like the volunteer pipelines are thin. How are we getting? It’s like people are underutilized. Maybe are our follow-up process are like overly complex. And you’ve done a great job on on this area. So let’s just jump right in.

Rich Birch — Where do you see some of the biggest gaps today in churches, whether it’s Liquid or other churches you interact, between, you know, getting people to attend church attendance and actual engagement. There’s a gap there. what What’s driving that? What do what do you think drives that gap in our churches?

Kayra Montañez — Yeah. So I see a couple of things. But before I get to that, you know, I just really wanted to start with something really encouraging because it’s not in my nature to be discouraging. So one of the things that I have noticed, in fact, I was actually spending some time with other pastors from other states in the U.S. And we were talking about like, hey, what is the Lord doing in the in the Big C Church? What are you experiencing in your context?

Rich Birch — So good.

Kayra Montañez — And one of the things I think that was a theme for all of us is it feels like we don’t have to work as hard to get people to come and be ready for what the Lord has for them. And that feels very exciting.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Kayra Montañez — And that’s like a theme that I’m seeing repeated across the entire nation with all of my pastor friends from different locations. Having said that, there are still things that we have to do to get people from going to just attending to engaging, like you were saying. I think there’s a couple of things that I saw.

Kayra Montañez — One of them is a big one, I would say, is like this idea of, attending versus belonging, right. So like first people actually want to come, but they don’t actually join people systems. So they come in person, they come online, but they don’t actually join any kind of people system. So when I say people system I’m thinking about groups, or dream teams, a support group, a class. That’s actually something that we started seeing a lot post-pandemic, and I would say it’s still here. So that’s one gap that I see.

Kayra Montañez — The second gap that I see is digital versus relational. So obviously, we at Liquid have spent a lot of, we’ve invested a lot in our digital ministry, and we really believe online and in-person can both thrive at the same time, and we’re seeing that.

Kayra Montañez — However, online services, while they can remove barriers, which is good, it also helps people stay anonymous unless there’s a clear bridge for those people to actually join in-person community. And so churches that haven’t figured out well how to do that will continue to see a gap between people who are attending, whether it’s in person or online, but not actually engaging.

Kayra Montañez — There’s also the people who just come for big events, right?

Rich Birch — Yep.

Kayra Montañez — We’re approaching one of them, even as we film this podcast, next week is Christmas Eve. So we joke at Liquid, we have the CEOs, they come for Christmas, Easter, and other big events, but they don’t actually have a weekly rhythm of attending and engaging.

Kayra Montañez — And then there’s people who I would say are curious about serving and for the most part are open to helping, but are not really ready to make a serving commitment and actually take on a very consistent role. So I would say across the breadth and width of churches, that’s probably something that would hit most people, no matter where you are.

Rich Birch — Yeah, for sure.

Kayra Montañez — Definitely we experience all of them at Liquid.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I there was a lot there, in which I appreciate. and i appreciate the way you’ve kind of diagnosed. I think there’s multiple ways to kind of um diagnose or kind of pick apart – Hey, here are different aspects here, or different ways that we’re seeing this kind of attendance versus engagement question. So maybe, you know, pick apart those attending versus belonging. What has Liquid done? What are you doing to try to help move people from just attending, actually getting into those people systems? What does that? What are you learning on that front?

Kayra Montañez — Yeah. You know, we’ve had a major shift at Liquid, I would say, in the past two years. The best way that I can explain this is with a gaming analogy, because I have teenagers and they love gaming.

Rich Birch — I love it.

Kayra Montañez — So if you um go back to when we used to play Mario Brothers, you remember Mario Brothers?

Rich Birch — Sure, yeah.

Kayra Montañez — Mario Brothers has prescribed path where if you did not follow the path, at some point Mario would die. Like if you stayed behind and the camera kept moving, the character would die. You remember that?

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Kayra Montañez — And that’s the way that a lot of churches, even today, approach helping people connect. There is a prescribed path for you, and we’re going to tell you what you need to do and what you have to do. Then Zelda came into the scene and Zelda is like, hey, choose your own adventure. You can start your adventure anywhere you want.

Rich Birch — Right.

Kayra Montañez — And so I feel like Liquid, we’ve shifted in that. We used to be Mario Brothers, like, hey, here’s a prescribed path for you. Here’s all the things that you have to do to connect. Whereas now we’ve shifted over the past two years into like, hey, we have a lot of things that we can offer you. And there are many different things depending on your season of life, on your felt needs, on what you’re looking for, on what you’re interested in, on what makes your heart beat. Tell us what you want to do and we’re going to help you.

Kayra Montañez — And so in order for us to understand what is it that people want, we created an event that we do every month called Connect and Conversation. And the whole idea and the way that we market it is if you’re new to Liquid, or if you are not new, but you haven’t connected yet, you haven’t found your people, you haven’t found something that you want to be a part of, come to this event.

Kayra Montañez — We feed you. We get to know you. And then we follow up personally with you. It’s very high level concierge, kind of a follow up system, where after we connect with you, we ask you, hey, what are you actually interested in? What are you looking for? Because your needs as an empty nester who’s been married for over 25 years, you’re parenting adult children who are already married are very different than mine who have two team have two teenagers.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Kayra Montañez — One of them is about to go to college, right?

Rich Birch — Yep, yep.

Kayra Montañez — And so that has actually produced incredible fruit from getting people who are attending.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Kayra Montañez — Now I’ve actually offered them something they’re interested in, which is making connections with people. And then from there, we follow up to offer, what do you need?

Rich Birch — That’s so cool.

Kayra Montañez — And everybody has different needs. Some people just wanna join teams because they’re just like, I just wanna serve. Some people, they really just need a lot of care. And so maybe they need a support group and we’re gonna offer that to you.

Kayra Montañez — Some people may need marriage mentoring. We’re gonna offer that to you. So it really depends. And what we’ve seen is people taking significant next steps once they go out of that event. And that has really changed the past. In the past, we would only be marketing teams and groups, role and relationship, join, ah you know, get into a role and connect with a relationship. And while that’s still good, I’m not saying that’s not good or not needed.

Rich Birch — Right.

Kayra Montañez — It’s not the only thing that people are looking for.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s interesting. Can we, I’d love to dive just a little deeper on on that because I think there’s ah a really key learning there for lots of us. This idea, and you didn’t say it this way, but where my brain went to, you know, I think we have, we have for sure in the past done the thing where it’s like we have these giant funnels that we’re pushing everyone through.

Rich Birch — And and the only question we’re really asking is where do you fit in our funnel?

Kayra Montañez — Correct.

Rich Birch — Like where, You know, and we and we push and literally, and this is no, you know, kind of slam on other systems, but it’s like, this is the, you know, step one, step two, step three, everyone do step one first, then you do step two, then you do step three.

Rich Birch — So the the connecting conversation, that feels like highly, like it’s volunteer intensive. You got to get a lot of volunteers in there because it sounds like you’re having one-on-one conversations or something close to one-on-one. Unpack what that looks like. Maybe as a guest, if I arrive at that, what do I actually experience when I show up there?

Kayra Montañez — So you you can register up until the time that we have the event.

Rich Birch — Yep, that’s great.

Kayra Montañez — So we do math you know magical math with the food and and the preparation so that we can just accept people who are going to come on the day of. Because we promote it, obviously, every week. And then the day of, we actually promote it. We get most people to show up the day of the event.

Rich Birch — Right, okay.

Kayra Montañez — So people will come. There’s going to be a lunch. And then they’re going to sit at a table with about five other people who have a facilitator at that table.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Kayra Montañez — And that facilitator is actually going to lead them through a series of relational icebreakers because the event is designed for you to first connect. You want to meet other people who are just like you. Maybe they’re new or they’re not new, but they haven’t connected yet with somebody.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Kayra Montañez — And so there’s going to be a lot of relational icebreakers you know during the first part of the event. And then after that, we get into like, hey, what are you looking for? What are you hoping to get out of? What do you need? What are you interested in? We make notes.

Rich Birch — How can we help? All that kind of stuff.

Kayra Montañez — That facilitator takes really good notes based on what people are saying. And then the follow-up begins.

Rich Birch — That’s so cool. I love that. That’s what a great learning. You know, I think so many times we’ve seen that step and for sure that echoes what I’ve seen in in a number of churches. There’s really a trend away from the class being the first step.

Rich Birch — It’s like the stand that we used to do that thing where it was like, okay, someone stands up at the front and they’re going to talk for 50 minutes about why we’re such a great church. And, ah you know, that really has gone away. I would I would echo that, that we’ve seen that as ah as a best practice for sure. So let’s talk…

Kayra Montañez — When we do measure…

Rich Birch — Sorry, go ahead. No.

Kayra Montañez — …oh sorry, as I was to say, we measure the activity of everyone who goes to Connect in Conversation and what they do.

Rich Birch — Oh, that, tell me about that.

Kayra Montañez — And so there’s, or ah how we say it at Liquid is it’s correlation, not causation. Like I can’t prove that if you go to this event, your next steps were a direct result of this event…

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.

Kayra Montañez — …but we can correlate that because you came to the event you actually took these next steps, if that makes sense.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Kayra Montañez — So we’ve seen tremendous, tremendous engagement grow because of that.

Rich Birch — And that’s on Sundays. You do it on on campus after the last service, that sort of thing.

Kayra Montañez — Every month. Yes, every month at every campus after the last service, we promote it up to the day of the event…

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Kayra Montañez — …and we do it rain or shine. Whether it’s five people or 10 or 50, obviously at our largest location, sometimes we have about 100 people show up every month to these events.

Rich Birch — That’s great. I love that. That’s a great. You’re coming in hot, Kayra. Great learnings, even you know, with friends, we’ve got through the first question.

Rich Birch — So yeah, and we’re, you know, it’s fantastic. So one of the one of the things I’d love to hear a little bit about, um you know, that when we look in the data, people’s anxiety, there’s there seems to be some anxiety around or concern around discipling people. We offer these discipleship pathways or engagement pathways. And it’s like, we do this stuff, but then people don’t actually take advantage of it. It’s like, we do, we offer small groups, but people don’t do them. Or people we offer classes and people don’t actually engage on them.

Rich Birch —What are you doing to try to move to, to ensure people are actually engaging with the various pathways that you’re developing at Liquid to actually get them to use them?

Kayra Montañez — So this is a very interesting question in this particular time because at Liquid we’re just about getting ready to or just ready to ah blow up small groups basically.

Rich Birch — Oh, nice. Okay. I’d love to hear more.

Kayra Montañez — Yeah, so I would say that small groups was the one metric that did not recover for our church post-pandemic. So even though our volunteer pipelines at times felt thin, we were able to have incredible momentum around that. We can talk more about that later. How did we do that? We recovered in attendance and giving, baptism, but we were not able to crack the code on small groups. We were at an all-time low, about 20% our church…

Rich Birch — Oh, wow. Yeah.

Kayra Montañez — …was engaged in small groups, pretty low. And so we started surveying people.

Rich Birch — Yep.

We’re like, what is it that people actually want from the small groups? Like, what is it that we’re not offering that they’re looking for? And the one, it was shocking to us that the number one thing, I mean, it shouldn’t be shocking because we are a church.

Kayra Montañez — The number one thing that people wanted was to understand the Bible. So for the first time ever, we have uncoupled relational connection from biblical literacy. In the past, our small groups, the thing that was in the driver’s seat, I would say, was the relational connection. We wanted people to connect, to join a group so that they could make friends, do life together. We used to um promote it that way, if you remember. Do life together. Where are the people that you’re doing life together?

Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

Kayra Montañez — For the first time ever, we’re actually putting biblical literacy in the front seat and relational connection on the passenger seat. So you will actually make connections, but that’s not the goal of this process right now. The process is for you to actually understand and read and study the word of God. In fact, our new tagline is to know the word of God so that you can love the God of the word.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. And is that so if you change the the container that that fits in or are you changing the like, like…

Kayra Montañez — We did. We changed the container.

Rich Birch — So what’s that look like?

Kayra Montañez — So right now we’re offering people different levels of biblical literacy.

Kayra Montañez — The biggest vehicle that we’re that we just piloted this fall through the book of Revelations, if you can believe it. So we’re like, why not start with the hardest book of the Bible?

Rich Birch — Yes.

Kayra Montañez — And what we did was we created a Bible study midweek on a Wednesday night where people would go in person and study the word of God in tables with other people. Now, obviously there’s facilitators who have been trained and vetted. And once you join a table, that was kind of like the table that you were going to go on this journey with, but it’s not a small group. It’s a, it’s a short term. It was 10 weeks. We went through the entire book of Revelations, 22 chapters. We would do homework in order to get ready for this midweek study, we would come, we would have a conversation around what did you put in question 10?

Rich Birch — Yep.

Kayra Montañez — What did I write? This was hard, I don’t understand. And then there was teaching.

Kayra Montañez — And we also piloted doing that same thing with our high school students so that parents could actually come with their kids on the same day, drop their high school kiddos in their own cohort, and then they would go to their own biblical midweek you know Bible study.

Kayra Montañez — And that was, too, a great success. So we are trying to figure out like what are the appropriate levels of biblical literacy that we can offer a congregation…

Rich Birch — That’s so good.

Kayra Montañez — …that is increasingly illiterate in biblic in in the Bible.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Kayra Montañez — And deep dive, make no mistake, is the highest level. So that’s not for everyone. And we understand that. And so the parts that we’re trying to figure out is what’s like the appropriate next level to that for somebody who’s not willing to come in person 10 weeks to do homework and study, you know, the actual Bible.

Kayra Montañez — But, it was fascinating to just uncouple those two things for the first time. And I would say it’s in the right frame of, in the right approach. You’re still making friends.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Kayra Montañez — You’re just not, that’s just not being the driver.

Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, I do wonder. So we for sure have seen that. I’ve seen this conversation. I don’t claim to be a small groups expert. I never have.

Kayra Montañez — Me neither.

Rich Birch — Like for 20, 30 years, it’s always been a mystery to me. I’m like, it’s like hard. It’s a hard system to run and to to build. And, but for sure, post COVID it it is, I would say that’s a universal concern that it’s like, whatever we used to do, I see this all over the place, whatever we used to do to try to get people into groups, we don’t do that anymore. We’re doing something completely different. I happen to be at Liquid this fall. I think you were speaking at a conference when I was there. Bummer…

Kayra Montañez — I was, I missed you. Yeah.

Rich Birch — And I saw the deep dive. I think that’s what it was called.

Kayra Montañez — Yes.

Rich Birch — Deep dive that night. And I remember, i remember thinking, I was like, Whoa, this is like, ah this is incredible. Like, you know, I don’t know how many people were there that night. There was a ton of people all lined up and ready to go. I’m like, that’s, That’s cool. I love that.

Rich Birch — Well, let’s pivot. You kind of flagged it there, the volunteer piece.

Kayra Montañez — Yes.

Rich Birch — I’d love to know what you’re learning on this front, you know, to rebuild volunteer culture. We had this kind of, I don’t know when we’ll stop saying post-COVID. I don’t know whether we’ll be like that generation that was like after the like war or like after the depression where like for 40 years we’re going to be talking about it.

Rich Birch — But it does still feel like we’re post-COVID. I don’t know when that is. But what have you done to kind of restart? How what’s going well on that front externally? Liquid feels like a incredibly volunteer you know robust culture – help us understand what’s that looking like what are you learning these days?

Kayra Montañez — Sure. Yeah. I mean everything you said is still very much a factor. I mean, we are constantly having to work at this. This is never going to be a problem that I feel we’re ever going to solve. It’s really a tension that we’re managing. And sometimes tension feels better and sometimes it doesn’t feel good.

Rich Birch — Right.

Kayra Montañez — In fact, this year, I would say in March, we probably had like our biggest crisis in the broadcast campus where our church growth so far outpaced the amount of people that were serving that we were finding ourselves having to close rooms for Liquid family…

Rich Birch — Ooh.

Kayra Montañez — …not because we we hit ratios, but because we didn’t have enough volunteers. And that doesn’t feel great…

Rich Birch — No.

Kayra Montañez — …especially if you’re a new here family, right?

Rich Birch — Yes.

Kayra Montañez — And so we were like, all right, we need to do something really aggressive. And the best way that I can explain it is we did like a try before you buy.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Kayra Montañez — Very low approach…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Kayra Montañez — …low hanging fruit. We said, hey, we we casted a vision, right? It’s never about we need volunteers, but we actually told a really significant story of where’s all the fruit that the Lord is bringing to this church, all the spiritual fruit that we’re seeing, like people are getting saved, people are getting baptized, they’re coming to get to know Jesus, they’re studying the Bible.

Kayra Montañez — It was incredible.

Kayra Montañez — But we need people to use their spiritual gifts. And so we came up with a campaign called For the One. And everything was geared for that one person. Like, who’s who are you going to go serve? Who’s the one that you’re going to go serve?

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Kayra Montañez — And the try before you buy was, we’re going to give you a hoodie. We designed a hoodie. It was called, it was, you know, at the tagline For the One. And the key is you only get it after you serve a couple of times.

Rich Birch — Okay, that’s cool.

Kayra Montañez — So this is the try before you buy. You know, you’re going to try it out.

Rich Birch — Yes.

You’re not going to go through the whole background, pipeline, covenant process because we need people now and we need them quick.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah.

Kayra Montañez — So you’re trying before you’re buying. But if you like it and we’re going to make sure that first serve experience is incredible for you, then we want you to buy it.

Rich Birch — That’s so good.

Kayra Montañez — And we’re going to reward you by giving you swag that’s limited, exclusive. Not everybody’s going to get it. Rich, you would be surprised. Like I’m still to this day, i have been at Liquid, it’ll be 13 years in April. And I am still shocked by how much people, the gamification of playing to people’s particular interests…

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.

Kayra Montañez — …whether it’s FOMO, they don’t want to miss out, whether it’s the idea of collecting exclusive apparel.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah.

Kayra Montañez — There’s something here for everyone that just draws people out.

Rich Birch — It’s true. It’s true.

Kayra Montañez — We had over 400 people sign up for the one.

Rich Birch — Wow. That’s amazing. That’s great.

Kayra Montañez — It was incredible. And we were able to tell amazing stories of people who were coming and showing up and serving, whether it was our special needs kiddos or high school whatever you want to call it. We had it. And and I would say the appeal of a try before you buy, how can you shortchange without? So this is key. You don’t want to reduce the quality. But you do want to shorten your pipeline so that you can get people quicker to try it. And then once they actually feel like, hey, I really enjoy this, now we’re going to get you through the whole, you know, rest of the process, right? But you can still serve while we do that.

Kayra Montañez — So that was a huge thing. And then obviously, you know, like the free apparel swag, that always is a nice incentive to give to people. So that was huge.

Rich Birch — It’s true.

Kayra Montañez — It was very successful. And that’s what I would recommend is like, hey, can you run, try before you buy little events with like swag, and like you you get you have people serve for a limited amount of time. Like you don’t give them the swag immediately. You make them work for it.

Rich Birch — Right. Yes.

Kayra Montañez — They got to serve three, four times before you give it to them.

Rich Birch — Yeah, we did a similar thing last summer. Our kids ministry team did a similar thing last summer where we did the summer serve, which we hadn’t done in in actually a number of years. And they they pulled that out and did summer serve. And it was the same thing. If you signed up, you got a t-shirt, a specific t-shirt for that.

Rich Birch — And then you, there was, they basically were asking you to serve once in June, once in July, once in August, like once a month, just for the summertime. And if you served, um I forget exactly what the ratio was, but it was, you got entered in a draw for however many times. And basically, so if you served all three, you got like 10 times the number of draw things to win. And it was all this stuff that you, you could win. And it was like really great gifts.

Kayra Montañez — Yes.

Rich Birch — And you would think that that should not motivate people.

Kayra Montañez — But it does.

Rich Birch — But it does.

Kayra Montañez — It does.

Rich Birch — And and you know and it was and, you know, they did it in really fun, you know, hey this is going to be a fun thing to be a part of. Talk to me about the, because there’s a friction thing there to learn around trying to reduce the friction the kind of onboarding friction, I think over time that stuff can become, you know, it’s, it’s the, we actually are like our, we can become just too hard for our people.

Kayra Montañez — Yeah.

Rich Birch — What did you learn through that process in, in trying to find that balance of like, we want to make it easier to onboard people, but we still want to, is there any kind of lessons from that when you look back on that?

Kayra Montañez — To me, the the lesson really is, again, there is a tension between you can’t shortchange, especially when it comes to kids. I can’t emphasize this enough.

Rich Birch — No, yeah, absolutely. Yep.

Kayra Montañez — Like I oversee all of these ministries and it would be not on my watch will will this happen, right?

Rich Birch — No, yeah, yeah.

Kayra Montañez — So we have to make be very sure that we’re not shortchanging the safety procedures.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yep.

Kayra Montañez — At the same time recognizing these things can take some time, right? Like we ask people to get a background check, they have to be interviewed, they have to sign a covenant, they have to have a reference. I mean, these things this is a lengthy process.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Kayra Montañez — And I stand by it. We have to do that.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Kayra Montañez — At the same time, can we actually live in a world where we are marrying our need to have someone in the room while also still doing all of these things simultaneously, not actually waiting for all of this to happen so that then they can come.

Kayra Montañez — And that’s kind of how we figured it out. Our Liquid family pastor came up with a process where she’s like, okay, we can shorten it this time. They’re only going to do these three things, not four, not six. But while they’re in the room trying it, we’re going to continue to do the other remaining four.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.

Kayra Montañez — It’s messy. It’s not always the best thing to do in an ideal world. You are not doing that. But when you’re faced with crisis, then you need to come up with, you know, resourceful ideas.

Kayra Montañez — And so what I would say about the volunteer pipeline is this. There are short-term problems that you have to solve while you’re still working on this very long-term. Like this is a culture that you have to create.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Kayra Montañez — And in order for you to create a culture, you have to tell stories. You have to celebrate what you want to be repeated. have to make people feel thanked, encouraged, appreciated, seen. You those are all long-term things that you have to be doing all the time. This is like nonstop.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Can’t take the, you can’t take the gas off that pedal for sure. Pedal off that gas.

Kayra Montañez — Correct. You cannot take your foot off the the pedal. But at the same time, there are things that are short term that you really do have to also do. And sometimes that will require teaching from the stage where you’re actually envisioning people about why this matters so much.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Kayra Montañez — And this is what we did in March with the For the One. So I would say it’s it’s both/and; it’s not either/or. And so if that’s helpful, that’s how I would approach it.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s super good. That’s good. If there was a church that was, if you were sitting across the table from an executive pastor, maybe you’re at a conference or someone drops in your office and they’re, they’re feeling really stuck on this engagement issue. They feel low. Like it’s people were, maybe it’s groups, it’s teams, it’s all of it. Like it’s, we’re not moving people through any kind of pipeline.

Rich Birch — What would be some of those first steps or first recommendations, first things you’d have them look at, maybe like a diagnostic or a first couple of things that you’d have them think about in this area?

Kayra Montañez — Well, I would say if there’s a way for them to know of the people who are attending and maybe they figure this out with new here, how many of those people take one next step within the first month?

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Kayra Montañez — That would be one diagnostic that I would first see if I can do with the data that I have and the data that they collect and they actually figured that out.

Rich Birch — Yep. Yeah, that’s good.

Kayra Montañez — If they’re able to do that, then the next diagnostic would be what percent actually move into a people system…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Kayra Montañez — …whether it’s a group, a deep dive experience, a dream team within 60 to 90 days, right?

Rich Birch — Yep.

Kayra Montañez — Because if you do that, you’re going to find the blockage. You’re actually going to discover Maybe our attendance is fine. We don’t have an invest and invite problem, but maybe what we have a problem with is our conversion rate. And so then you can start to identify what is it about our conversion that we need to fix?

Kayra Montañez — Is it that we have ah unclear on-ramps? Or is it that our processes are too high friction? It’s too hard people to get involved. If you actually find like, no, actually people are taking next steps. Great. But they’re not sticking to it. Then you have a different problem. Then you can actually diagnose…

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Kayra Montañez — …oh, maybe the first serve experience actually wasn’t sticky enough. It wasn’t welcoming. Maybe there were issues with scheduling. Maybe we didn’t give clear information. So you can kind of figure out what the problem is based on how you’re measuring it and what you’re discovering. That’s how I would start if I didn’t know what the problem was. Does that make sense?

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. That makes total sense. And, you know, it it definitely aligns with one of my bugaboos that I constantly driving with executive pastors. When you look at the actual numbers—I and I have not run into a church yet that this is not the case—most churches actually have a front door problem. They don’t have a back door problem. They their actual problem that we think we feel like, oh, like people aren’t sticking and staying in groups, they’re not staying and volunteering. But statistically, that’s actually not true. When most of the time, if you look at, okay, all the people that end up in a group, what is the kind of churn rate on that? Whatever that number is, I’ve never seen a church where it’s higher than the people we’re missing on the front end with exactly with what you said is how many people are removing from new here to taking the first step in the first month?

Rich Birch — Because that you lose a ton of people in that door right there. That is a, you know, by a multiple of 10 or 20, like it’s a lot more that we’re missing out. And, you know, generally in most churches…

Kayra Montañez — And can I just [inaudible] to that?

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Kayra Montañez — Because I just want encourage people, like, figure out a way to target your new here audience.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.

Kayra Montañez — So at Liquid, for example, if you come for the first time, not only do we encourage, highly encourage you to tell us that you’re here for the first time because we give you an awesome gift.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Kayra Montañez — Lots of churches do this, but then we survey people who came for the first time.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Kayra Montañez — And based on what they answer, they receive a custom follow-up process for the first 30 days.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Yeah.

Kayra Montañez — We don’t, so in that regard, like it is worth to look at that.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Kayra Montañez — Because you’re going to find out a lot of information and a lot of data about what people are choosing to do, where are they going, why they’re not sticking to it or why they’re not even going in the first place.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Kayra Montañez — Like I’m shocked that I’ve been to churches sometimes to speak and they don’t actually really do like a new here call out. Like they don’t.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I was going to say that. You said, oh, churches do this.

Kayra Montañez — Maybe not.

Rich Birch — And I’d be like, Kayra, I’ve been to way too many churches where they don’t do any of that. And they’re like, well, we’re not really sure. And I’m like, this is a solvable problem. We can fix this.

Kayra Montañez — Yes. Yes.

Rich Birch — There’s like real things you can do here. Actually, I worked with a church last year, a fairly large church in 2024, where they were experiencing some of these issues and so and I was like I basically said the same thing I just said, I’m like you’re losing people on the front end. And they’re like they’re like well we do a gift. And I’m like no you don’t. And I said there’s a and there’s a few things to fix around that. In 2025 the year we just ended, they received we made a few changes it’s not about me there’s about them they made a bunch of changes, they ended up receiving 5,000 more first-time guest contacts than they did 2024.

Kayra Montañez — Wow. Just like we’ve always told it to do.

Rich Birch — Now they did not grow by people but it’s just by focusing on that, right?

Kayra Montañez — Amazing.

Rich Birch — It’s just by like saying, hey, how are we what are we going to do to ensure that that step goes well with folks? So anyways, there’s huge opportunity there and in lots of churches. Kayra, you’ve been incredibly generous to give us your time at this time of year. As you’re thinking, kind of last question, as we’re thinking about 2026, what are some of those questions that are floating around in your head as you think about Liquid, as you think about the future? What are some things that you’re wrestling with that you’re wondering about that you’re contemplating as we go into this year?

Kayra Montañez — Oh my gosh, Rich, so many. After this conversation, you know, I really am interested to see what’s going to happen with our discipleship model since we just blew it up.

Rich Birch — Yes, yep.

Kayra Montañez — I’m helping all of that and changing the way that we even onboard leaders. Like I’m really invested in seeing this through.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.

Kayra Montañez — I also totally unrelated to this, but we just launched, I think in the survey, one of the questions that was asked was what’s the best idea that you had in 2025?

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, right.

Kayra Montañez — And I was like, well, I feel like one of our best ideas was to use AI to launch a Spanish service. And I am really invested in that in seeing like, how do we continue to grow that service? How do we continue to grow that ministry? We’re launching new ministries in 2025, or 2026. So that always feels exciting and daunting.

Kayra Montañez — So there’s just the work never ends. And there’s always it is an exciting and fascinating time to be in the church. I’ll say that.

Rich Birch — I would agree. I totally would agree. Yeah, it’s the best. I would think, literally, I think this is the best season that I’ve been involved in ministry for sure.

Rich Birch — For folks that don’t know what you’re doing with Spanish ministry, give us the 60 second, explain that again. Because I think I keep pointing churches to you saying, have you heard what Liquid’s doing? You go talk to them. So tell us about that.

Kayra Montañez — So basically we have a Spanish service. We do have live hosting in Español. We have live worship in Español. But then we take our English message and we pass it through an AI service called Heygen, which actually uses the communicator’s voice and matches the words to their lips and they’re just preaching, they preach it in Spanish. Even if they’re not bilingual, they will preach it in Spanish. And it’s like you, Rich, are speaking in Spanish. Your words match to your voice.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah, it’s it’s amazing.

Kayra Montañez — People get to hear the the gospel and the message in their language. So it’s been fascinating to learn who we’re reaching, who’s coming, who likes that kind of a thing. You know, as a Spanish speaker myself, I’m like, would I go to a service where the message wasn’t actually authentic Spanish and it’s an AI generated?

Kayra Montañez — I believe in the quality of our communication so much that I actually have to say, yes, I would. Because like last year, this year, we took our entire church through the book of Revelation. Tim spent 25 weeks teaching us the hardest book of the Bible.

Kayra Montañez — The fruit that that endeavor produced is incredible. And so when I think about what we’re doing, I’m like, I believe in that so much that I do think this is a this is a thing that’s actually good to do. Even if people would who would think like, why would they go to that and not like an authentic Spanish speaker?

Rich Birch — Yeah, interesting. And that, and you’re, you’ve been a year, that’s been basically almost a year you’ve been doing that now.

Kayra Montañez — A year. A year.

Rich Birch — And, and you’re be continuing to do it. So obviously something’s working. There’s some sort of version of like, Hey, we’re, we feel.

Kayra Montañez — We’re continuing to do it. we’re seeing We’re seeing the fruit. We’re seeing baptisms, people giving their life to Christ, getting baptized, showing up and joining teams, um reaching families. We’re reaching multigenerational families where the parents go to the Spanish service, the kids go to the English service because it’s simultaneous, right? Well, the English is going on, the Spanish is going on. So families get to decide. It’s just really interesting to watch. Obviously, it’s been challenging in the U.S. to grow a Spanish service because of everything that’s been happening.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah…

Kayra Montañez — But it’s just been really fascinating to see like the dynamics of who we’re reaching, who’s is sharing like who’s excited about it, and then using technology to further the gospel. It’s always exciting.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s fantastic. I know I was goofing around with Heygen a little bit. And the part that actually, this was you know almost a year ago when you guys started doing that that, one of the tests I ran that actually convinced me was, so I was like taking videos of me and I would send them to like a friend who speaks Spanish. And I sent to a friend who speaks, you know, a couple of languages that it was doing, but then I did the reverse. There’s a great church, Nouvelle Vie. It’s a French speaking church, large church, be very similar to Liquid, but they’re French speaking. And so I took one of the, the lead pastors from that. I took a clip of his message and translated into English. And I was blown away. I was like, Oh my word. Like,

Kayra Montañez — It is getting better and better every day.

Rich Birch — I was I was shocked. I was like, oh, that that is, yeah, could I tell? Yeah, but this guy’s an incredible communicator. And you know similar to you and Tim and the team at at Liquid, I’m like, I could see that work anyway.

Rich Birch — So that’s exciting. Kayra, it’s so great to see you.

Kayra Montañez — Thank you, Rich.

Rich Birch — Thanks so much for having time with us today. If people want to connect with you or with Liquid, where do we want to send them online?

Kayra Montañez — Sure. So my name Kayra, K-A-Y-R-A at liquidchurch.com. Happy to connect with anybody have questions.

Rich Birch — Thanks so much. Thanks for being here today.

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Andrew Hopper, Lead Pastor of Mercy Hill Church in North Carolina. Planted in 2012 with just 30 people, Mercy Hill has grown into a multi-campus, fast-growing church known for its gospel clarity and sending culture. In this conversation, Andrew shares why adoption and foster care have become central expressions of Mercy Hill’s mission—and how those practices flow directly out of the gospel. He also unpacks the heart behind his book, Chosen: Building Your Family the Way God Builds His.

Is your church unsure how to engage big social needs without drifting from the gospel? Are you looking for a way to mobilize people beyond church walls while keeping discipleship front and center? Andrew offers a clear framework for doing both.

To explore Andrew’s resources on adoption, foster care, and grab his book, Chosen, visit andrewphopper.com/chosen or follow him on Instagram @andrewphopper. You can learn more about Mercy Hill Church at mercyhillchurch.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: Portable Church

Your church is doing really well right now, and your leadership team is looking for solutions to keep momentum going! It could be time to start a new location. Maybe you have hesitated in the past few years, but you know it’s time to step out in faith again and launch that next location. Portable Church has assembled a bundle of resources to help you leverage your growing momentum into a new location by sending a part of your congregation back to their neighborhood on Mission. This bundle of resources will give you a step-by-step plan to launch that new or next location, and a 5 minute readiness tool that will help you know your church is ready to do it!

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Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. We have got a multi-time guest on, and you know what that means. That means that I really respect, deeply admire, and want you to listen up, and today is no exception. Excited to have Andrew Hopper with us. He is the lead pastor of a church that they should be following, that you should be following. He’s a lead pastor of Mercy Hill Church with five locations, if I’m counting correctly, in North Carolina, and is repeatedly one of the fastest growing churches in the country. I love this church on many levels. They’re centered on the gospel and have a radical commitment to sending people to the nations. They have a desire to make disciples and multiply churches. Andrew, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.

Andrew Hopper — Man, I’m so pumped to be here. Love the podcast. Really appreciate it, man.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I’m honored that you would come back. For folks that that don’t know Mercy Hill, give me a bit of a kind of an update. Tell us a little bit about the church.

Andrew Hopper — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Maybe update us from last time you were on.

Andrew Hopper — Yeah, man. So just real quick, planted in 2012. We had 30 people, all you know kind of young professional age, and man, just really believe that God could do something incredible ah through, you know just through our our open hands, and he did.

Andrew Hopper — And so it’s been 13 years. It’s crazy. We’ve been sort of pushing the same boulder up the same mountain for 13 years, just flywheel kind of concept and keep pushing. And ah the Lord has done an incredible thing, like you said, five campuses. And man, just moved into a new home and hub. That was from last time we had a chance. That’s been really great.

Andrew Hopper — We were in a rented location for a long time as our main like broadcast campus. We’re a video-based multi-site. And so um it’s ah it was a three or four-year journey to raise the money and build this new facility. But we’re in, and the Lord has really blessed that with tons of new people, highest baptisms, sent ones, first time guest numbers, all everything that we’ve done. This has been a, you know, we’ve gone been on a ride – praise God for that. It’s it’s, um, it’s for his sake and his renown, but this year has been unlike the others. So it’s been…

Rich Birch — Yeah, you were saying beforehand, it’s like 30 or something like 30 some percent year over year growth. That’s insane to keep up with.

Andrew Hopper — It is man. And the, and the giving does not, uh, you know, the giving doesn’t happen.

Rich Birch — Reflect that yet.

Andrew Hopper — So it’s, it’s like, we’re trying to do ministry on a budget of a church that’s 3000, but a church that’s running 4,500. And it’s like, how do you do that effectively without killing everybody?

Rich Birch — Nice.

Andrew Hopper — All your staff, I mean, so, but we’re, we’re learning, man, we’re figuring it out. It’s fun. We got, we just planted our sixth church. So that’s apart from the campuses. This is first time, Rich, we’ve planted a church in our own city.

Rich Birch — Oh, nice. That’s cool.

Andrew Hopper — It’s been really, a really cool dynamic and it’s been fun. He’s doing great. Man, it was a college student that we met when he was 19 years old at North Carolina AT&T 10 years later. He’s an elder here. He’s done a lot of different things. And man, he goes and plants a new church in Greensboro about five minutes from one of our campuses and they’re doing great.

Rich Birch — Wow. Yeah, that’s so good. Well, the thing, there’s lots I love about Mercy Hill, but one of the things that I’ve loved about your church from the you know the chance we’ve had to journey a little bit over the years about it is you just have real clarity around the mission, this idea of making disciples, multiplying churches. It’s like that has been rock solid from the beginning. When you think about we want churches to have discipleship at its core, this idea of a church that actually grows people up in their relationship with Christ. What matters most at the foundation? How are you keeping that so foundational to you know what’s happening at Mercy Hill?

Andrew Hopper — Yeah, I think um I think that we always sort of bought into kind of what we see in Acts 2 as a little bit of a flywheel. We call it gather, group, give, go. A lot of churches have something like that.

Andrew Hopper — The the difference, I think, at Mercy Hill a little bit than what I see ah in in in a lot of churches that we help mentor and coach is that 2020 hit and everybody was like, man, what is a church? What is discipleship? What are we going to do now? And and people were kind of… And I do think it was and it wasn’t, you know, it wasn’t just me. I mean, our, you know, our executive pastor Bobby, he was really integral in this. We sort of really doubled down on no, I kind of think the church is going to come back.

Rich Birch — Right.

Andrew Hopper — And I kind of think what we were doing is sort of what our church is set up to do. It kind of a brand thing. We are sort of a big box sending brand. And that, you know, for us, when we look at Acts 2, we’re like, dude, the gathering, there’s no more there’s no more important hour for discipleship and evangelism. And I know there’s a lot of things written against that. And people are kind of almost like downplaying it.

Andrew Hopper — We’re just like, man, we just don’t believe it. We believe people need to be in a group. You know, we they need generosity is lead step in discipleship, give. And we got to teach people that there’s a mission bigger than themselves. And if we do that, it’s going to funnel more people into the gathering.

Andrew Hopper — So I think fundamentally what I would say, we need to get, you know, we could talk about our value, you know we can talk about values to gospel and [inaudible] identity, but I think landing on you know, it’s very hard now to, to not get a word salad book form or thing. When you ask somebody, how are you making disciples? It can just be like…

Rich Birch — Right. Very vacuous. Who knows what that means? Yeah.

Andrew Hopper — For us, it’s just been a very clear, simple process.

Rich Birch — Right.

Andrew Hopper — Like, man, we believe if someone is in the gathering, if they’re in relationship, if they’re being pushed on generosity, and if they’re living for a mission bigger than themselves, that’s a current of maturity that will move them. They just get in the stream, they’ll move.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It’s so good.

Andrew Hopper — that’s kind of So you know for us, I think that’s as, you know we’ve we’ve tried to simplify things there.

Rich Birch — Yeah. And, and your last episode, I’ve pointed a ton of people to it, uh, to really, and we really unpack a lot of what you talked about there in more detail.

Andrew Hopper — Right. Yeah.

Rich Birch — You’re going to want to go back and, uh, and listen to that. You’ve reached as a church, you’ve reached a lot of people who don’t grow up in church that it’s like, there’s a lot of people who are there. You know, we used to say we ain’t your mama’s church, but mama didn’t go to church, you know? So, you know, and it’s been a long time that people were there. What challenges have you seen, you know, helping move people from curiosity into real ongoing discipleship? So like, I think there are, we’re seeing a swell of attendance across the country. People are like, oh, I’m kind of interested in this, but we got to move them from just, oh, this is something interesting to like, oh, I’m actually want to grow my relationship with Jesus.

Andrew Hopper — Yeah, I mean, and it’s it’s funny too, Rich, you probably have a better bird’s eye view of this than I do. But I feel like churches that have been faithfully growing for like the last 10 years, they’re not really doing a lot different now. Or even though there’s this big swell happening, what I do think is that some churches have sort of decided like, oh, clarity does matter.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah, that’s true.

Andrew Hopper — And don’t try to be friends with the culture. We’re going to speak in and be prophetic. And, you know, even even to the you know Proverbs 25:26 says, you know, there’s there there’s no there’s no benefit in a muddied spring. You know, it’s like you got to be sort of you got to figure out if we’re going to be clear.

Andrew Hopper — So, I you know, for me, I think like and you’re right, we do reach most of the people that we reach that are in the camp that you’re talking about our college age. We reach a lot of people, though, ah that are, you know, they’re they’re coming back to the faith because they’re a southerner.

Rich Birch — Sure.

Andrew Hopper — You know, they they kind of they kind of were, you know, they they did have some church in their background. They’re coming back. Their kids are not only born, but they’re realizing they’re sinners and they don’t have answers. They’re trying to figure that out.

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Andrew Hopper — They’re coming back to church.

Andrew Hopper — And, you know, I think the biggest thing that moves people from like interest into a decision point is just being very clear on this is what the gospel is. This is the life it compels you to. Are you going to be in or out?

Andrew Hopper — One of the things we say at Mercy Hill a lot is like, man, if you’re if you’re just intrigued, you know, if you’re interested, you’re not going to stay at Mercy Hill because we’re never going to let you, you’re going to get pushed every week. And it’s like, man, people are not really in or like that. I’m not going to do that. You know, they’re just like, no I’m not going to sit here and get like pushed every single week on something I don’t really… And the flip side is when people say, all right, you know what? Stake in the ground. I’m in.

Rich Birch — Yeah, we’re doing this, yep.

Andrew Hopper — I wanna look like this, I want to build my life on this. It’s like, well, now, you know, it’s it’s man, I’m hopefully, you know, putting tools in the belt every single week to live that life.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, it’s good. I do think there was a time where people wandered into our churches where I don’t think that happens as much anymore. I think people, when they arrive, they come with questions, with live active questions that they’re trying to wrestle with, kind of regardless of where they’re they’re at in their journey.

Andrew Hopper — Yeah.

Rich Birch — And they’re what you to your point around, you know, there’s no benefit in a muddy stream. People aren’t looking for anything that sounds like, well, what do you think? Because the reason why they’re there is because they’re asking questions. And so, you know, they’re they’re looking for clarity, like I think you’re saying.

Rich Birch — Well one of the things I love about your church is there’s a high commitment to, you’re you’re you’re tearing down what I think is a false dichotomy. Sometimes I think when churches come to this idea of outreach or making a difference in their community, there’s this there can be this gap or false dichotomy between doing good in our communities and making disciples. Like we gave that up at some point. We were like, you can’t, you know, we can’t do both of those things for some reason. Why, why did we do that? Why did we, as churches say, we can’t both make a difference in our communities and also make disciples?

Andrew Hopper — Yeah, I think it’s, I actually have a lot of sympathy for the fundamentalist leaning. I know it sounds a little bit weird.

Rich Birch — No, that’s fine.

Andrew Hopper — Churches that led from the, you know, from the good do good in your city kind of thing. I don’t think they’re right, but I do have sympathy for that because I understand how quickly that sort of, you know, is so hijacked by liberal, by theological liberalism to where it’s finally man we’re digging wells and wherever but we’re not talking about who the true source of living water is. Like we don’t want to be offensive we just want to do good without speaking the whole you know you know live your life as a Christian only use words if necessary, whatever, you know. And and I so I understand why people kind of fled and have fled that.

Andrew Hopper — Like, you know, I’ve even had our church before when I when I talk about adoption or we we have a ministry, and a ministry called No More Spectators. We’re like moving people towards community ministry. And we had people kind of going on like, oh, my gosh, this seems like a sign of like churches start going this way and then they lose the gospel.

Andrew Hopper — And I’m like, well, the reason you’re kind of feeling like that is because a lot of churches have done that. You know, you’re not [inaudible] like that just out of nowhere. Now, of course, I think it’s a little bit immature and we’ve got to push through. The way we talk about it, Rich, is, man, we want to do good in our community as signs of the kingdom coming.

Andrew Hopper — They are not building the kingdom. You know, if we go repaint a house or house a homeless person, one day that person would parted with that house, whether they, you know, get messed up and leave or whether they do great and then would die one day, you know.

Andrew Hopper — Or, if we have, ah you know, if we go and, and you know, we’re going to, for example, we have ah ah a family in our church that they need a ramp built because, man, the the brother is struggling with MS and he’s, they’re they’re fighting it like Christians do. We’re going to go do that. You know, we’re going to go build that ramp. That ramp’s going to rot and die one, you know, rot and rot away one day. And, you know, whether it’s 100 years from now or whatever.

Andrew Hopper — Like it’s not literally the kingdom. But when the outside world sees us engage and, you know, our church will talk about this primarily when we think about community ministry, we think about it in terms of adoption, foster care and families count, which I can talk to you about. I think it’s bringing a sign of the kingdom that is to the community around us to say, hey, this is not the gospel. But it sure points to the gospel.

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Andrew Hopper — You know, it’s a pretty good signpost of like, yeah, there’s a kingdom coming where kids aren’t separated from their parents, you know. And and so that’s kind of the way that we think about, it’s not, you know, it’s not the kingdom. It’s a sign of the kingdom that is coming.

Rich Birch — Yeah, let’s let’s dive in. So adoptions, foster care, families count. These are not small issues. Like you started with like putting a ramp on, painting somebody – those are like, okay, I can organize my head around that. And then we jump to what I think are obviously significant. How, it can be easy, I think, for church leaders it can be easy where, you know, we got a lot of fish to fry in our own backyard. When you see big problems like that, help us unpack that. Why do you as a lead pastor, why are you passionate about these issues? Why are these the things that you’ve chosen?

Andrew Hopper — I think it’s, man, I think it’s great. I mean if you can’t if you don’t mind I’ll go back and give you a little bit of context. I’m a context [inaudible]…

Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. Let’s do it. Yeah.

Andrew Hopper — …number one so I always want to frame it in where we’ve been. But the short answer to the question is I think that every church because it is made up of individual believers that have individual gift matrix, you know they’re they’re gifted the church is gifted in a unique way because the people which are the church are gifted in a unique way, right?

Andrew Hopper — And so to me, you know, slapping, you know, a top down every single church has to to manifest signs of the kingdom in X way, which, for for example, I’m not to pick on it, but like, you know, the whole diversity church kind of movement. I love you know, if that’s your brand, that’s awesome. That’s great. Go, go bring signs of the kingdom in that area. But you know what people do is they take their thing and then slap it on every single church. You know, this is the sign of the kingdom that you have to manifest.

Andrew Hopper — I don’t think that. It takes every kind of church to reach a city because there’s all you know, there’s every kind of people in the city. Right? For us, though, and I think for a lot of churches that that maybe are are made up a little bit like we are, I think there is a lot of meat on the bone for adoption, foster care, families count ministry. And I think churches could be greatly helped by latching on to maybe, you know, something in particular, maybe this, maybe this specifically. How we got there, Rich, was we had we had, you know, huge movement in our church in 2019. I was very convicted.

Andrew Hopper — Some of the exponential stuff was coming out, you know, mobilizing people outside the walls of the church. And I really was, man, I was just really affected by that. And I don’t want the dichotomy, you know, I don’t want, well, you your people serve in the church and not outside the church. It’s like, no, most people serve outside the church. If you watch them, they are serving inside the church as well. It’s it’s like a it’s like, man, you know, just just because serving inside the church is not the finish line, don’t demonize it because it is a starting place.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Andrew Hopper — So it’s like, I don’t like that kind of whole thing. But but it did affect me to say, OK, what are we doing to push to the outside? So we we we did a thing. You would have loved this, man. But it except for the fact that it didn’t really work that good. OK, it was awesome.

Andrew Hopper — It was, we still have the domain name – nomorespectators.com – I had the tagline: Jesus didn’t die to create spectators. He died to create servants, not spectators, workers, not watchers. We, man, you could go to nomorespectators.com and, you know, it was like, it was like a funnel for all of these community ministry opportunities in our city. So it was, you know, people from the housing, you know, authority type stuff would post things. And it was, it was all this kind of, it had a bunch of stuff in it.

Andrew Hopper — In the end of the day, great idea. It was a little too complex. Our people latched on to the foster care, pregnancy network, you know, ended up being families count, Guardian ad Litem and adoption. So our guy that was over all that at the time our sending director, which is hard for me to have a good idea that ends up dying hard, okay that’s just tough for me.

Rich Birch — You had a great sticky statement and everything. Come on.

Andrew Hopper — I’m the king of sunken cost bias. Okay. Like, I’m like, dude. And so finally around 2020, he came to me and he said, bro, I know this is hard for you. Cause it was like a two year initiative. He’s like, this is hard. He said, No More Spectators needs to just turn into Chosen. And it needs to be like, you had this idea for 30 different things. It just, this needs to be our niche, man. You know, we we don’t do a lot of these other things, but we do this really well.

Andrew Hopper — And it was hard for me. Ultimately, it was great wisdom by them, not me. And we started going down that road. And partly, I think it’s because, Rich, is heart is near to my heart. I have an adopted daughter. A lot of our staff have adopted kids. We just have a guy right now. Our associate director of first impressions at the Rich campus is in Texas right now, you know, bringing their daughter home.

Andrew Hopper — I mean, so it’s just, and so it’s sort of started to morph into, and the the the big thing I’ll say, and I, you know, I’ve been talking a lot here, but the big thing I’ll say is, if you think about the way I just ah described all that, it doesn’t start with the need in the community. It starts with the gift matrix of the church. The poor we will always have with us. Like there there is no there’s no scenario until Jesus comes back that there’s no kids that need to be adopted, you know.

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Andrew Hopper — And it’s just the reality of it. And so there’s always going to be need in the community. It’s more about, okay, what are the Ephesians 2:10 works that your church, because the church is made up of people who are individually called, what are the you know what are those works that God has set out for your church?

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Andrew Hopper — And, you know, so for us, we just felt like, dude, this is a a heartbeat thing. Our people got more, they get more fired up. The greatest thing I’ve ever been able to mobilize our people for prayer for is go to the abortion clinic and pray. I mean, a thousand people on their face in the pavement. It’s like, it just strikes a chord with our church and who we are. So we wanna run after that.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Well, I love that. And we’re going to dig out a bunch of this, but let’s think about it first from a perspective of somebody who’s maybe attended your church. They just started. They’re they’re relatively new, you know. The idea of something as weighty as adoption or foster care, that’s a big ask. And you know when you yeah how do I experience that as someone who’s just new? What are some ways that I could get plugged in? What does that look like? That, that, cause I, I’m hard, it’s hard to imagine that I go from zero to, to, you know, adoption, you know, how do I end up or flying to Texas to, you know, pick up a kid. That’s a lot. Help me understand. How are you, cause I know you guys are so good at moving people along from kind of where they are to where you’re hoping to – what’s that look like? What’s the kind of, how do you bring people along in this?

Andrew Hopper — Man, totally. I think you’re right. I think it’s a combination of big vision on one end and then baby steps on the other. But the big vision matters.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Andrew Hopper — Like we don’t want to be scared of the big vision. So, you know, for example, our weekender process, which I know you talked about some, you know, that weekender process, you know, people literally for years, we would give them a passport application in the weekender process. Because we’re like you’re at this church you’re probably going to be overseas at some point on a mission trip. And so to me it’s like people are like dude that probably scares the crap out of people. And it’s like well, I mean we want to make sure they know what they’re getting into, you know. We’re not telling them they got to do that tomorrow…

Rich Birch — Right.

Andrew Hopper — …but that is the, and then and then there’s all these baby steps, right? Like hey come to you know, every February we do Sent weekend. Come to the prayer night. Like that’s a baby step. That’s not you getting on a plane to go to Nepal. But you know hey we’re doing this missions offering at the end of the year, like maybe get you know. So there’s all these I would say that our the way we think about Chosen ministry, which again: adoption, foster care, families count, and rope holding, which is a big part of this discussion…

Rich Birch — Okay.

Andrew Hopper —…is that way. It’s big vision on the front end so we’re never going to tell somebody, hey you know, I know you could never do this. Like I’ll never…I think people can do it and they should. Or or you know more Christians than are should. At the same time we’re also not guilting anybody. Like so I’m I you know the the first thing I’ll tell people is like, hey, you know we start talking about adoption. I always say always say, hey, we have not lined up a bunch of little kids in the lobby for you to take one home today, okay. And then I’ll tell them, that’s next week.

Rich Birch — That’s great.

Andrew Hopper — Okay, so yeah but and we we try hard to like put some levity in it. Man, we’re not everybody’s not going to do that. In fact, a minority, of a small minority is going to do it. But everyone can be involved and there are baby steps.

Andrew Hopper — So we try to highlight giving, man. Like if you someone adopts from Mercy Hill, we pay 25% of their adoption. Okay.

Rich Birch — Wow. Yep.

Andrew Hopper — If they’re a member and they’re in a community group, they get 25%. All right, well, you know, we’re going to connect that. Like, man, you you are never going to adopt. You feel like that’s, but it’s like, well, I give $100 a month to the church.

Rich Birch — Right.

Andrew Hopper — Well, hey, what? You know, you’re you are you are supporting.

Rich Birch — We’re making a difference.

Andrew Hopper — We do parents night out, you know, for all of our foster and adoptive parents. We do it quarterly. It’s like, hey, those are opportunities to come and serve, man. You can serve the meal you can do. We do rope holding, which I know we’ll probably talk about. But but the the idea of rope holding is just like, man, I’m not going to do this, but I can be in the corner for somebody. They’re in my community group. I want to be their first call if they need a babysitter or they need, you know, a gift card, or whatever they need.

Andrew Hopper — So I think, man, we try to do big vision. You know, we’re going we’re going to set a huge vision, you know, for 2030 for 2030. Actually, we just hit our vision for 2025, which is 200 adoptive or foster families. There’s a lot of ways people can be involved with it.

Rich Birch — So good. There’s, I think thing I would encourage friends who are listening in, you really should be following Mercy Hill, Andrew, because I do think you’re a very unique communicator where you, and you just described it. And I think to you, it’s just like, that’s just what you do. But this idea of like, you’re calling people to a high bar, but you’re not leveraging shame, guilt. you know, it’s, and I think so many times our language can kind of lean in that direction. Or we can, if we really are trying to push people towards something, or we can just undersell the vision. You know We can be like, oh, it’s not that it’s not that big of a deal. You know It’s not for everybody. So I would encourage people to listen in.

Rich Birch — Talk to me about rope holding. How is that, what’s that look like? Unpack what that looks like a little bit.

Andrew Hopper — Yeah, so rope so the the the rope-holding analogy, which a lot of your listeners probably gonna already know this, but you know William Carey, Andrew Fuller, William Carey, father of modern missions, he’s he he he makes the statement, “I’ll dangle at the end of the rope in the pit, if you’ll hold the rope,” talking to Fuller. And Fuller held the rope for him. Like, you know, Carey the mission field, Fuller’s raising money, preaching sermons, organizing mission boards. So that’s kind of the picture. Right.

Andrew Hopper — So we say, all right, not everybody is going to go down into the pit of foster care adoption, even even families count. I mean, these are these are massive spiritual warfare battlegrounds you know um which is one of the reasons why our church wants to be involved so much. I mean you if you want to talk about getting to the you can do all the rhetoric in the world, brother, you want to get to the very bottom of societal issues, you you be involved in somebody’s story that’s trying that’s trying to get their kids back from the foster care system. You’re trying to help them with that. I mean, every you could fatherlessness, poverty, drug abuse. I mean, everything you can think, you know.

Rich Birch — Right.

Andrew Hopper — So this this is just spiritual war. So what we tell people is like, hey, man. If we got people that are mobilizing for for adoption and foster care, we better have people in their corne,r because the enemy is going to bring his war machine.

Rich Birch — Right.

Andrew Hopper — And we see it all the time. I mean, you’re going to see, you know, a family steps in to adopt and you’re going to start seeing them, you know, there can be sickness. They can have marital problems. They can have financial things that come up. They can begin to believe lies, frustrations. I mean, There’s just so they can become, you know, their their heart can start getting hard toward the system. I mean, there’s so many things that come at them. And so what we say is we need people in their corner, right.

Andrew Hopper — Now, it’s funny because like the way our church has operated was at first we said, all right, we’re going to we’re going to do, you know, the the community group is going hold the rope for the people. And and that that was fine. The problem is when we really kicked off this ministry, so many people got involved that it became overwhelming to the group. So we said we got to start this…

Rich Birch — Right.

Andrew Hopper — …rope holding ministry. The rope holder ministry is good. It’s like, what does a rope holder do? They kind of do whatever the person needs them to do.

Rich Birch — Right.

Andrew Hopper — So there are examples of the rope holding ministry going really well, where it’s like, hey, man, they’re they’re helping with ah child care with the other kids when they’re going to foster care appointments in court. And or, hey, we’re we’re helping you do some things around the house whenever you’re overseas doing your adoption, which is going to put you three weeks in country. You know, there are some good examples like that.

Andrew Hopper — But the other thing that we’ve learned is, you know, foster care and adoption families that are that are walking through this, they’re going through a very trying time. And to just pair them with somebody they don’t know and say, hey, look, here’s your supporter, it can be a little bit like, oh, that’s awesome, and then they never reach out to them.

Rich Birch — Right.

Andrew Hopper — They never reach out – the rope holder’s ready.

Rich Birch — Right.

Andrew Hopper — But it’s just like, dude, I don’t I don’t know you. And this is a hard time.

Rich Birch — Who are you? Yeah, yeah.

Andrew Hopper — And so what we’re trying to figure out now as we reboot that rope holder idea is, you know, how how do you kind of integrate relationships they’ve already had? Almost like, hey, do you have this massive pool of people called rope holders? Or when an adoptive family comes up, you say to them, hey, who can we shoulder tap, rope holder for you.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Andrew Hopper — And then we’ll train them.

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s cool. Yeah.

Andrew Hopper — But not have this pool, but say for you, we’ll put them in. So that’s kind of what we’re, so as part of our reboot for 2030, you know, that’s sort of what’s in our mind right now.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool.

Andrew Hopper — We have a whole playbook for the way we’ve done it, which anybody, you know, if anybody wants any of those things, they can go to AndrewPHopper.com/chosen. And I can send you any of that stuff we have, but on the rope holder side, you know, just full transparency, we’re still, you know, kind of, of you know, and I’m sure it’ll always be that way that we make an improvement.

Rich Birch — Yeah, always trying to make it better. Yeah. And I want to, yeah, at some point in this journey, you decided, hey, we’ve got to put this vision and framework into writing, like we and you actually ended up writing a book, and friends who are listening in, I want to encourage you to pick up a copy of this book. Listen, we’re almost half an hour in. I know you’re interested in this. This is the kind of thing you, Andrew’s a trusted leader. He’s, I’ve had a chance to take a peek at the book. This will be super helpful for you. But, but that’s a lot of effort to put this together into a book. What pushed you from just leading this ministry to ultimately saying, hey, I want to capture this into a resource that could help other people?

Andrew Hopper — Well, you know, Rich, I never really saw myself as like a writer, just like a practitioner, man. Let’s just keep keep working on the thing and going.

Rich Birch — Right.

Andrew Hopper — And truthfully, I got approached. Hey, would you have any interest in writing? You know, New Growth Press is the one that’s editing this book and putting it out. And it was funny, though, because the second I was asked, I was like, man, I know what we should do [inaudible] that should be what we should do. It’s it’s our it’s it’s my story’s family story with our special needs child that we’ve adopted. It’s our church’s journey. But more important than either of those two things, it’s a grounding in the gospel-centered motivation. Because I think that is what is so important. We don’t do guilt motivation. And you know, cute kids and sad, cute kids and and sad stories are good reasons, but they you need a great reason, because it’s hard.

Rich Birch — That’s good. Yep.

Andrew Hopper — You know, and the great reason is of course, adopted people adopt people. And so we delve way into the helplessness of our spiritual condition, how God adopted us and then how, you know, that provides a deep motivation for us to go and do the same for others.

Rich Birch — Can you unpack that a little bit more? Because I think this is, ah to me, a core part of the book that I think is really helpful. Even if you’re maybe listening in, you’re thinking, okay, I’m not sure adoption or foster care is necessarily the thing, but you unpack this idea of gospel rather than guilt. And can you talk us through, you know, how, yeah, just talk us through that part, that concept a bit more. Just double click on that a little bit.

Andrew Hopper — Yeah. So, you know, when we think about behaviors that flow from the Christian life, there’s really only two ways to think about it, right? Like one of them is we try to do things in order that God would approve of us, you know, that he would, you know, he would, ah he would, he would let us in his family, you know, those those types of things. And we, you know, this is for a lot of Baptistic world, which I am, this was kind of like, wow, this is really revolutionary, but that was 20 years ago – Keller and all that. You know, we just started understanding what more of a gospel center motivation.

Andrew Hopper — Of course, the other way to think about Christian behaviors is you are part of the family because of what Christ has done for you. And the family has a culture. The family works a certain way. There’s fruit that will pop out in your life, not so that you can gain entrance into the vine. That’s not how it works. Like, ah you know, you don’t you don’t produce fruit to get in the vine. You produce fruit because you’re in the vine.

Andrew Hopper — And so, you know, when we think about like like Titus 2, for example, we think about how the grace of God appears to all men, teaching us not just salvation, but teaching us to obey his commands. So there’s something about salvation that and is inherent to the gospel-centered motivation of of of going out, living the Christian life. You know, it’s it’s kind of the John Bunyan idea when they said, man, if you, you know, if you keep preaching this gospel message, people are going to do whatever they want to do. And he said, no, if I keep preaching this gospel message, people are going to do whatever God wants them to do.

Rich Birch — Right.

Andrew Hopper — You know, and so I think what we’ve done in this book is just say, hey, that that is true universally in our Christian life. Like if I’m not tithing and I’m stingy, I can do motivation in two ways. Number one, how dare you, you piece of trash that you never, you know why would you never give? Look what God, you know, blah blah blah, blah, blah, guilt, guilt, shame, shame. Right.

Andrew Hopper — Of course, the other way to say is like, man, what kind of riches has God given you in the gospel? And what kind of inheritance do you now have as a son of the king? It’s like, all right, that’s powerful, you know, and it will it will take us places that guilt never can. Guilt will work for a while. You can put fire under somebody and it’ll move them. But if you put it in them, they’ll run through a wall, you know.

Rich Birch — So true.

Andrew Hopper — And so it’s like it’s like, hey, OK, so you could do it with all these different things. We’ve tried to take this book and do that with adoption to say, all right.

Rich Birch — Right.

Andrew Hopper — We know James 1:27, we need to care for the fatherless and the orphan. We understand. I mean, dude, there ain’t, when you talk about metaphors, there’s two big ones, marriage and adoption, you know? And so if you want to do adoption well, we can do it from two motivations. One motivation is look how many kids need. That’s all and that’s all true. That moves my heart. You know, look, can you believe this story of this kid? And that’s fine.

Andrew Hopper — Of course, you could do guilt, too. Like, how dare you, you know, have this nice, happy family and not go adopt a little poor orphan kid. You know, you could do guilt. All those things will be fine. They’ll put fire under you a little bit. But if you want to put the fire in someone that is going to carry them through the long haul of all this stuff, I think it’s better to start with: All right. There’s kids that need to be chosen. Were you chosen?

Andrew Hopper — You know, so like one of the you know, one I’ll give you an example. We know of a family here in the tribe. They’ve got an awesome son that is 20-something years old, kids got Down syndrome, and they adopted him from Ecuador. And his story was one day a carpenter was working on this building and he heard cries coming out of a dump, like a trash heap. This child had just been born and been left you know with his deformities had just been left for the dumpster.

Andrew Hopper — And they brought him to the orphanage. And next thing you know, you know about three or four years later, he got adopted by this family that we know. And that family’s father, he said, Eddie’s story is my story. I was pulled from a trash heap by a carpenter. And if you it’s like that is powerful.

Rich Birch — Right. Yes.

Andrew Hopper — You know, when you start thinking about, man, in my sin, I was one who had no part and parcel in the kingdom of God. I was headlong in rebellion. I had rejected. I was not a son. And God lavished his love upon me, that I would be called his child. And if if that has happened to me spiritually, how could I not want to do that? Or at least help those. you know I’m not saying that’s a call for everybody, but be involved in others that are doing that as well.

Andrew Hopper — And so that’s what we say. Adopted people, adopt people, chosen people, choose people. And hey, I didn’t answer your last question.

Rich Birch — That’s fine.

Andrew Hopper — Okay. Your last question was, why did we write the book? Very simply, I think more people just need to think about what I just said. You know, and I think churches do. And I think that if, you know, a lot of churches have adoption-minded people and a little bit of of fuel in that fire might create some really cool ministry in that church. And this book lays really well for being like, man, make it a small group resource for eight weeks. You know, it’s got questions at the end of each chapter.

Andrew Hopper — Like my my prayer is that this book would catalyze tens of thousands of Christian adoptions.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Andrew Hopper — And that’s why we wrote the book.

Rich Birch — Yeah. It’s and I thought the same thing as I was looking through it, that this would be a great resource for a small group, a great resource as a staff training thing. Because again, I think there’s two things happening on two levels. From my perspective, there’s what you’re actually talking about – adoption, but then there’s how you talk about it. And I think even both of those, I think could be interesting as a as a staff team to kind of unpack and think about. How do we ensure that what we’re doing is so gospel-infused. That’s part of why i love you as a communicator. I think you do such a good job on that. It’s just fantastic. So I would strongly encourage people to pick it up.

Rich Birch — Help me understand the connection. So Mercy Hill is known for, or at least from my perspective, known as a sending church. You know, the thing, one of the and I’ve told again, I told you this before, you’re the first church leader I’ve ever bumped into that has connected new here guests to number of missionaries sent. This like idea of like this funnel of how do we move people all the way along to that? I think that’s incredible. How does that kind of sending culture and adoption, how does that fit together? How does that help kind of fuel the flywheel of what’s happening at Mercy Hill?

Andrew Hopper — Well, you you helped me think about this when you came and did our one day for our for our Breaking Barriers group, you know, for the pastoral trainings that we do. Because in your church growth book, you talk about how, ah you know, community ministry is used as an evangelism tool. I’m not, I’m probably butchering the way you talk about it.

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

Andrew Hopper — That was like a big light bulb for me because because we we definitely do that, but we have not leveraged the communications of that.

Rich Birch — Right.

Andrew Hopper — And so, um you know, for us now, what we’re trying to really think about is how does our adoption of foster care ministry and rope holding and families count ministry, how does that create open? We call them open doors, right?

Rich Birch — Yep.

Andrew Hopper — Like, how does it create open doors, questions in the community, where people come in? And we’ve seen it. You know, so like when we’re talking about the sending culture, that pipeline starts when new people get interested in faith, they get interested in church.

Andrew Hopper — And, you know, like, for example, we we had a guy, we just did a historic video. Man, he’s saved, baptized, serving now, ah or, you know, family, young family, prototypical Mercy Hill guy, like, man, just you know blue collar heart, white collar job, just that. I mean, just everything we talk about. Right. He’s our he’s kind of our guy. And the way he got connected was his boss had signed up to be a rope holder. And it just blew his mind. Like, why would a guy take limited time and go help these families? I mean, he of course, he thought it was a good thing. But it really intrigued them.

Andrew Hopper — And so we’ve tried to we’re trying to leverage more of the communication side. It’s tricky. You don’t want to be like, hey, look at us you know in the community. At the same time, I’m like, man, this year, you know when we’re going to do a pretty significant upgrade to some of the there our foster care system has, there’s a house that has a backyard and the backyard is where families come to play with kids, play with their kids they’re trying to get back from the foster care.

Rich Birch — Right. Yep.

Andrew Hopper — And we’ve said like, you know what, man, if these parents are putting in, that needs to be like the best, the best backyard, and you know?

Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, absolutely. 100%.

Andrew Hopper — And so, you know, we’re, we’re going to do a significant investment in some, you know, whatever…

Rich Birch — Play structures and yeah.

Andrew Hopper — …like a, you know, whatever, like a pergola type thing. They’re going put a shed out there. All going to connect it, pavers, all that stuff is what we want to do. And, you know, we’re, we’re looking at that and I’m going like, yeah, I mean, I get it. Like you don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, but at the same time, that’s not for us. That’s for people that are interested to say like, why would a church do that? You know, like why do they care so much?

Andrew Hopper — And it’s because, Hey, sign of the kingdom. We want to build families through adoption. We want to restore families through foster care and families count. This is part of that. So we’ve tried to we’ve tried to use it as a way. And I would really encourage church leaders to think about that. Like, hey, is your community ministry actually an evangelism strategy?

Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, that’s good. Love that. And yeah, I would encourage you continue to encourage you to think through those things because I do think that there’s, we’ve seen that there’s huge opportunity for folks who don’t normally attend church. They’re interested the way I’ve said in other contexts is they see it as a good thing. We see it as a God thing. We’re not going to fight them over the semantics of it at the front end. Because like you say it’s it’s the kingdom puncturing through that grabs their attention and you’re like oh what what you know what’s going on there? It’s a first step – how do we encourage those people?

Rich Birch — Like on that backyard project, I no doubt if you’re rallying a bunch of guys to go work there, I know that there are guys in your church who have friends who they could invite who don’t attend church who maybe would never walk in your church who’d say, hey, will you come and work for a Saturday for a couple hours and swing a hammer and help us do this thing? Let me explain what this is about.They absolutely would show up, right? 100% they’d show up and and they’ll get intrigued by that. And they’ll be like, oh, what’s going on there? That’s that’s fantastic.

Rich Birch — Well, friends, unabashedly, I want you to pick up copies of, not just a copy, copies of this book. So where do we want to send people to pick up copies, that sort of thing?

Andrew Hopper — Yeah, man, they can just go to andrewphopper.com/chosen.

Rich Birch — Perfect. Yep.

Andrew Hopper — The book’s out so they can pick up a copy. I mean, it’s also just like on Amazon or whatever, but that link will take you straight to New Growth Press.

Rich Birch — Right.

Andrew Hopper — So, yeah, man, would love it. Would love to hear from anybody who’s using it well in a church context um to catalyze Christian adoption.

Rich Birch — Love it. Anything else you want to share just as we close and how can people track, go to the website, other places we want to send them as we close up today.

Andrew Hopper — Also on Instagram, we have a lot of stuff on Instagram, andrewphopper on Instagram. Yeah, the last thing I would say as a closing thought, Rich, is you know, the Christian adoption boom has sort of happened 20 years ago. People started talking about this a lot more. And now you can feel in some of the podcast world and all that, there’s a bit of a backlash, not not to don’t do it, but also like, hey, no one told us how hard this was going to be.

Andrew Hopper — You’re dealing with traumatic situations, kids that have been brought, you know, I mean, it’s, it’s crazy. One thing I try to do in this book is I try to say, Hey, that’s not a good reason to take our ball and go home, you know.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Andrew Hopper — Instead we just need to try to shoot as straight as we can. And I do that in this book, man. It is hard. It’s you’re on the front lines of spiritual war. I mean, it’s almost like, dude, the, the, the greatest transfer of faith from one generation to another happens in the home. We love it when adults get saved. I get that. But let’s be honest. Statistically, where does it normally happen? Right.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Kids.

Andrew Hopper — And so if you got a home that’s broken apart, that Christians are trying to put back together, what did we think Satan was going to do? You know, and so instead of taking our ball and going home, let’s just call it what it is, and then ask the Lord to steel our spine…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Andrew Hopper — …and to move forward with the mission. So, yeah, man, I’d love for people to pick it up. And I appreciate the time to talk about it today.

Rich Birch — Andrew, thanks so much. Appreciate you. Just want to honor you for the work you do. You’re a great leader. And I love how God’s using you and your church to make a difference. Thanks for being on the show today.

Andrew Hopper — Thanks, brother.

 

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Tim MacLeod, a former nurse who escaped the financial treadmill by flipping couches—and now teaches others how to do the same.

Are you a church leader feeling the financial squeeze? Looking for a side hustle that doesn’t require debt, special skills, or hours you don’t have? Tim’s story offers a practical roadmap—and encouragement—for anyone needing to close that income gap.

To learn more or access Tim’s free scripts, visit him on Instagram @thefulltimeflipper or explore his full course at tim-macleod.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!

Rich Birch — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. We’re definitely having a very un-unSeminary episode today. You know recently I heard some statistics that I was like, man, we gotta do something about this. According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics—you’re like, it’s a little early in the year for the Bureau of Labor and Statistics—but there’s a 13% gap between what religious workers—people who are clergy actually, is the title—and the average income in the country makes – a 13% gap. In fact, it even gets worse when you look at people, there’s a category called “religious workers, other”, which these would be like not the senior pastor types. This is like everybody else that works in a church. There’s a 40% gap between those people and the the average salary in the country.

Rich Birch — And so why am I bringing this up? Because I know that there are people that are listening in today that are feeling that gap. Here we are in January and they’re feeling the pressure of that. And I want to help you with that. And so I’ve got a friend, like a friend from real life, friends. This is like we’re in the same small group. We know each other, incredible leader, and I want to expose you to him. But more importantly, I think he can help you with that gap.

Rich Birch — It’s my friend, Tim MacLeod. Tim was a nurse with the dreams of fatherhood and home ownership, but after a few years was faced with reality and no time, no amount of overtime was really going to fill the gap that he needed to make things work. And after being stuck on that kind of financial treadmill, he found a way out. He found the niche of, wait for it, friends, flipping couches. What? Flipping couches and was able to quit his nursing job and now does this full time. And I’ve asked him to come on. Uh, because I think what he did at the beginning, even part-time, I think could help some of us today that are, that are listening in. Tim, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.

Tim MacLeod — Thanks so much for having me, man. I’m excited.

Rich Birch — This is going to be a good conversation. Kind of fill in the story. Tell us a little bit, uh, tell us about your background, and how did you get in? How did you go from nursing to flipping couches?

Tim MacLeod — So I wanted to be obedient and I got married maybe a little bit too young at 21. My wife was still in teacher’s college. And so very, very quickly I was thrown into adulthood of two cars, rents and all the things that come with that.

Tim MacLeod — And nursing was good. I was a registered practical nurse, so not a university educated RN making bank, but doing okay with a college diploma. And I got the comfy gig at a long-term care home because I preferred eight-hour shifts and not the, I didn’t want nights.

Rich Birch — Midnight and all that.

Tim MacLeod — I just wanted, yeah, exactly.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tim MacLeod — I wanted the free parking and the the reliable six to two shifts. That was just the lifestyle that I liked. And the only way that I could stay afloat financially was with doubles. I had to do my six to two and then at least once a week, usually twice, if I wanted to have any money to play with, um I would work the two to ten.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Tim MacLeod — And that was cool while my wife was in college or while she was finishing up teacher’s college, that was fine. And then, we had a newborn baby and that was fine. Because anytime that I would have to do those doubles, she’d go to sleep, go for a sleepover at her parents’ place. And, uh, and I would just drudge up the shifts.

Tim MacLeod — And, but then when we were pregnant with number two, I knew that there was difficulties coming. And the road ahead did not look very good. And so I needed something different and all my options for replacing the income suck. Like I could go back to school and upgrade to RN, but I scraped through the first time. So that was nuts.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tim MacLeod — I didn’t have much hope in myself in that avenue. And I could go, I could relocate, I could move or I could commute about an hour and 20 away to the mental health hospital and make like danger pay in like an asylum, basically with my current qualifications.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tim MacLeod — And everything just looked terrible. I hated all of that. And all I needed was something better than overtime. I just needed to replace that portion of the income. And I needed something better in my evenings that hopefully I could do with my wife or from home. And so I was looking at side hustles.

Tim MacLeod — And I had a little bit of success flipping phones and iPads because that’s all that I really understood…

Rich Birch — Okay. Yeah, yeah.

Tim MacLeod — …all I understood at the time. And I live about an hour north of where my in-laws live, which is a pretty dense population. I’m in the sticks and the supply was really light there. So I could reliably go for a free meal at my in-laws place, pick up an iPhone or three and for like 300 bucks and then bring them home and sell them for 450 bucks. And so that took that took the pressure off and that was like grocery money.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tim MacLeod — And it was really consistent, really reliable. And and it was fun too. I really liked it. I liked the negotiations. I liked, I liked not trading time.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tim MacLeod — Like I liked making making a profit instead of a wage. And that I was hooked on that, but there was competition. Like I wasn’t that clever doing that.

Tim MacLeod — There was there was kids that were closer to the inventory ripping around in little Hyundai Elantras and uh i remember meeting this this Indian kid named Lucky, at least his Canadian name was Lucky, and he was beating me to all the goods. And and I met him one time to buy a phone for myself and I actually got to meet him and ask him some questions and he was making four grand a month flipping phones.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Tim MacLeod — And I thought that is so sick, and it’s just a pure cash hustle. And he was making more doing that than whatever his office or IT job was at the time. And I was super inspired by that, but I didn’t want to compete with him. So that kind of that kind of festered with me a little bit.

Tim MacLeod — And um I just got an awesome idea. Well, was gifted to me by the Holy Spirit, I think, based on how fast and how fierce it came, that I need to get skills and tools to sell in a different category, something with a higher barrier to entry. And I wanted something where I didn’t have to compete with the Honda Civics and the Hyundai Elantra’s that were closer to the action.

Rich Birch — With Lucky. Yes.

Tim MacLeod — Yeah, exactly. He was smoking me. And and it also, it was a little bit of that and then also a little bit of me coveting. I wanted to get like, um I wanted an excuse to buy a Ford Ranger. I wanted a truck at the time.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Tim MacLeod — And so this combination, this combination of like wants and needs at the time, had me pitching an idea to my brother, Ross. I’m just like, Hey, what do you think about instead of phones and iPads? What if I got a truck and I started doing like washers and dryers or appliances or something like that? And he said, that’s a cool idea.

Tim MacLeod — You’re good at the phones and iPads thing. And I definitely like, you’re good at the negotiations, all that. But don’t start eight grand in debt. That’s so stupid. Why don’t you just borrow my trailer and just try it? And I said, well, I don’t have a, I don’t have a hitch on my car. He said, get a hitch on your car, buddy. Okay. So, put that on the Visa, did not have the money for it.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Tim MacLeod — Put that on the Visa, put a two inch two inch hitch and four prong wiring on Mazda 5 like the little four cylinder, little mini minivan.

Rich Birch — Oh, I wish I would have saw this at that. I wish I would have s seen this at this phase. Cause that, that, that would have been amazing to see him getting pulled around.

Tim MacLeod — It was it was pretty cute and it was a big trailer too 12 by 6 aluminum being pulled by this little aaaaahhh. And it was stick shift and and…

Rich Birch — Nice.

Tim MacLeod — …and the first day I got the trailer, the only thing I could find, because I was just itching to use it, was a free couch. And it was one of those beige microfiber, like gets dirty if you look at it wrong.

Rich Birch — All right. Yes.

Tim MacLeod — Like they hold on to every water stain.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.

Tim MacLeod — And it was that and it was free and it needed a little bit of TLC. And I went and I got it for free. Brought it home and with a damp cloth, scrubbed out all the little marks and had it looking good. Took a picture of it, listed it with an offer of delivery and it sold the next day for 280 bucks.

Rich Birch — Wow. That’s amazing.

Tim MacLeod — It was awesome. Because a nursing shift net was like 180.

Rich Birch — Wow, OK.

Tim MacLeod — I think I was, I think I was 28 bucks an hour for an eight hour shift after taxes. Yeah. Probably like 180 hit the account.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Tim MacLeod — And so 280 for that. And it was one of those trips of free meal at, at the in-laws and then a free couch and then bring it home and then solve somebody’s problem of, I just got an apartment. I don’t have a car or my car’s too small and I need a couch.

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Tim MacLeod — And their option was, rent a U-Haul or go to Leon’s and finance something that comes delivered. Both are not very good options for most people. And then lo and behold was this guy who said, I got a couch, I can bring it by. And it was just the easiest yes for them. It was a win for everybody.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tim MacLeod — The person who needed the couch picked up, didn’t care about the money. They needed reliable pickup more than they needed cost recovery of the item because they had a deadline. I needed a way to make some cash and the person on the receiving end needed a couch that was affordable that came delivered. So it was just a win-win-win for everybody. I was like, okay, forget about appliances. Couches – I love this. And it was easy, it was it was easy enough to lift by myself.

Rich Birch — Did you ever do appliances? Did you ever do appliances in there?

Tim MacLeod — Yeah. I did a washer and dryer and ate a loss on that because it needed repair and I didn’t…

Rich Birch — Love it.

Tim MacLeod — …I paid for someone to assess and they were like, yeah, this thing’s broken. Was like, sweet. Okay. So a hundred bucks to you for, for, to tell me that it’s hopeless, and then pay for junk removal too.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Tim MacLeod — Like it was just such a loss. But couches, I could reliably sit on it and be like, well, that’s not broken. And I can handle that little stain or I can, my wife could stitch that up.

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Tim MacLeod — And, uh, it was just so safe. And I loved it. If, if I were handier, I’m sure I could, flip snowblowers or lawnmowers or cars or something like that, but I’m not handy. I’m just, I have the ability to relocate stuff.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tim MacLeod — And so couches were just so perfect where I could just accurately be like, that’s 300 bucks to me.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tim MacLeod — And they only want 60 for it. Perfect. Let’s do that.

Rich Birch — So and let’s double click on that. A part of what, so friends, like with the reason why, I think you’ve seen why I’ve got Tim on the the line today. I want to inspire you to think like, hey, you you could in part-time make a little extra a month. And I’m going to get to that with Tim. I’m going We’re going hammer down on, okay, what exactly would be some of the first steps that you take? But let’s unpack a little bit more. You’ve talked about once this insight, which I think is just a stellar insight that’s obviously at the core of your business. It’s this whole timing thing. Like people, you know they think a couch is worth certain certain amount, but they’re moving on X date, and the value of that couch goes down. But then it’s literally the reverse. Someone on the other side, they have an empty living room and they’re like, I need something here.

Rich Birch — Unpack that a little more, kind of double click on… that value exchange and how you’re in the middle of that. What’s it talk us through what that looks like.

Tim MacLeod — Yeah, there’s there’s a gap. There’s a gap in the marketplace. On the one end, we’ve got people who need it picked up and their options are hope that someone will pay the price that they want. And then if they hit a deadline, then their option is junk removal or put it to the curb. And so there’s a gap to fill there.

Tim MacLeod — And then on the other side, there’s a gap of people who need a couch dropped off but can’t do it themselves. Like how many, what’s the population of people that own a truck that can actually do it is probably less than 10%. Most people have cars and hatchbacks and SUVs and stuff like that.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tim MacLeod — And then there’s also the how many people can lift a couch. I would say easily less than half the population. And so there’s just this huge gap that can be filled. And so by just committing to being the dude, you can help a lot of people solve a lot of problems. And there’s a little slice in it for you too.

Rich Birch — So one of the things I’ve heard you say is that you have found this process of buying couches and then, you know, sitting on them for a while, maybe cleaning them a little bit and then turning around selling them is really flexible. Talk us through that. You know, it feels like you’re, you know, you’re, you have some time control. Talk us through what that looks like for you in your current world.

Tim MacLeod — Yeah, the time freedom is crazy. And that was the appeal in the beginning was [inaudible] I didn’t want to be strapped to a location, a building to to make money. I had to be away from my wife and kids. But when it, couches just took off so fast that the first time I flipped a couch, I immediately called the scheduling office and reneged on all of my overtime. I said cancel all my two shifts.

Rich Birch — Oh, wow.

Tim MacLeod — I’m done. I’m I’m I’m just doing my 10 shifts. And, and then it didn’t take too long before i wanted to quit so fast, man. I wanted to be out of there. My, my my passion for the, like, I was so replaceable. Like as soon as if if I’m gone, someone’s going to fill the shift.

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Tim MacLeod — Like, ah but there was a, there was a huge, there was a need that, and it was fun for me too. It was a game. I forget the question.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I was just talking about the time flexibility, like how you feel like it’s, you know, you have a fair amount of time freedom. Part of what I’m trying to get to is pastors are busy people. Church workers are busy people. Is this even the kind of thing that they could fit into, you know, an existing as like a side hustle kind of thing?

Tim MacLeod — Yes. Yeah. The time freedom is crazy. And so on the buying side, I’m just letting people know when I’m available. And sometimes I’ll tie it up with ah with a $50 deposit so that they can market it sold with confidence and they know that I’m not going to ghost on them. And that I have the peace of mind of nice, that’s mine for when I need it. And I’ll squeeze them for a deadline so that I make sure that I’m providing the service of reliable pickup in a manner that works for them.

Tim MacLeod — But yeah, I’m just stacking pickups when it’s convenient for me. And in this current season, it’s during school hours.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tim MacLeod — So I’ll drop the kids off at school and then rip south and grab some stuff. But in that season, it was I’m available in the evening. And so I would come home from school, I’m sorry, work from my nursing job. And my wife would pack up, we pack up a little cooler bag of like a road picnic of dinner.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tim MacLeod — We had a one-year-old baby at the time and, uh, oh, that summer there was a lot of 50% off pizzas. Pizza Hut had a, the, the apps, we had all, all the apps, lots of road dinners.