The player-coach approach: benefits and limits

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re joined by Lane Lowery, Executive Pastor of Warren Church in South Carolina and Georgia. Founded in 1898, Warren is one of the fastest-growing churches in America, with over 7,000 members across its campuses. Known for its Southern hospitality, Bible teaching, and focus on whole-person ministry, Warren has also launched a Hope Women’s Center and is preparing to open a Hope Mental Wellness Center.

Is your church wrestling with how to scale leadership and maintain unity as you grow? Tune in as Lane shares how Warren Church transitioned to a global leadership model, developed essential staff practices, and keeps the large church personal and relational.

• From single-site to multi-site. // When Lane first arrived at Warren Church it was a single-campus church of around 3,000 members. Today, with multiple campuses and ministries, the church has grown to nearly 7,000 members and employs 270 staff. Lane notes that what worked for one or two campuses no longer fit once the church expanded to six ministry expressions.
• The global leadership model. // To address challenges of scale, Warren implemented a global leadership structure. Eight global ministry teams oversee preschool, next gen, discipleship, missions, worship, communications, counseling, and the Hope Women’s Center. Each leader is a “player-coach,” serving in a campus role while also providing oversight across all locations. This ensures alignment while keeping leaders grounded in local ministry.
• Why unity matters. // Before adopting the global model, Warren found itself with competing ministry silos—at one point even running three different discipleship models across campuses. The new structure promotes collaboration, vision-sharing, and consistency, ensuring that ministries move together rather than in competition.
• The player-coach advantage. // Asking leaders to both manage a local ministry and oversee their area globally is demanding, but it builds credibility. Leaders bring ideas from real ministry experience and share them across campuses. To prevent burnout, Warren Church emphasizes intentional rhythms, regular meetings, and clear communication.
• Eight Essential Practices. // To embed culture, Warren Church developed a set of eight essential practices guiding staff behavior. These are celebrated in staff communications, reinforced during onboarding, and reviewed biannually. Practices like “Connect with People” and “Leverage Change to Move the Mission” ensure values don’t stay on the wall but shape daily ministry.
• Keeping it personal. // Even as a large church, Warren prioritizes personal touches. Each location has a paid staff member who oversees the First Impressions Team at that campus, and every first-time guest receives a personal call within the week. With about 70 new guests each Sunday across campuses, that’s more than 3,500 calls annually. Hospital visits, prayer before surgeries, and care for shut-ins also remain a priority, modeling shepherding from the senior pastor down.
• When it’s time to change. // Lane encourages leaders to admit when structures aren’t working, secure leadership buy-in, research and learn from other churches, engage stakeholders early, and clearly communicate the “why” behind changes. Transitioning Warren’s model took about a year of planning, listening, and implementation—but the results have unified and strengthened the church.

Visit warren.church to learn more about Warren Church and reach out to Lane here. Plus, download the Eight Essential Practices document that Lane talks about.

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Episode Transcript

Rich Birch — Well, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Really looking forward to today’s conversation. You are going to be rewarded for tuning in. Thanks for being here. I think we’ve got one of the oldest churches on the hat we’ve ever had on an episode. Warren Church, founded in 1898, is one of the fastest growing churches in the country, which I love that because so many times I think we think of fast growing churches and like there they’re like celebrate their fifth year and they’re so excited for how long they’ve been around.

Rich Birch — But this church has been around for a long time. They’ve got four campuses in South Carolina and Georgia. Southern hospitality, generosity, strong Bible teaching, and a passion for making disciples and multiplying disciple makers have been a heart of Warren from the very beginning and behind all they do. They also have a sports and fitness center programs that really try to minister to the whole person. Lane Lowery is with us today. He is the executive pastor. Welcome to the show. So glad you’re here, Lane.

Lane Lowery — Thank you so much, Rich. I am grateful to be a part of this.

Rich Birch — This is going be a good conversation. Why don’t you kind of fill in the picture? Tell us a little bit. That’s kind of the bio of who the church is. Tell us about the church. Kind of give us the flavor and tell us a little bit about when you say executive pastor. I know as an XP, it’s like every XP looks a little different. Tell us about your role.

Lane Lowery — Sure, sure. Well, as you said, Warren is about 127 year old church. We are multi-site and it’s happened just incredible. We launched our first multi-site campus, Grovetown, right at 11 years ago.

Rich Birch — Nice.

Lane Lowery — And then within the last five years, we’ve adopted two other churches.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Lane Lowery — So we did a church plant, if you will, which you know but was our first multi-site. And then the the Lord brought us two other churches and it’s been incredible.

Lane Lowery — We also have a Hope Women’s Center, which is a crisis pregnancy center that we oversee. And we are just about to launch what we’re calling the Hope Mental Wellness Center um that will open the doors of that in January. And so we’ve already had a counseling ministry going on here, but we’ve expanded that. And we’re really excited about about that.

Lane Lowery — We’ve got a large church staff here and I get to serve as executive pastor. We have another executive pastor as well, which I’ll talk about later on, who is just a phenomenal leader. And and so just grateful that the the Lord allows us to participate in this together. And we’ve got an incredible leader, Dr. David McKinley is our senior pastor. He’s been with us 17 years…

Rich Birch — That’s great.

Lane Lowery — …and the and the Lord has just done ah an incredible work here. As you said, we are in the in the deep South and it is it’s ah it’s a fantastic ministry. I’m grateful that that the Lord has allowed me to be here. I’ve been here 19 years. And I’ve seen a lot of change. I’ve had a front row seat to some exponential growth. And it’s been a lot of fun ah to to be a part of that.

Rich Birch — Why don’t we talk a little bit of metrics there in the time from when you came 19 years ago to today? What does that look like from a growth point of view? Just to give people, I know you’re not like, ah you’re you not a bragging kind of guy.

Lane Lowery — Sure.

Rich Birch — you don’t want to brag about it, but talk us through that. That helps give a little bit of context for the conversation we’re having.

Lane Lowery — Great. Well, when I came here 19 years ago, we were Warren Church, Augusta. That was it. And, um and since then we’ve planted three other churches and we’ve launched a Hope Women’s Center. Like I said, the crisis pregnancy center, and we are in the process of launching a Hope Mental Wellness Center.

Lane Lowery — So we’ve, when I got here, we were, um probably around 3000 members total. We’re over almost 7,000 now.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing.

Lane Lowery — Um, like I said, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve been able to adopt some churches and, and we’ve been able to, just really engage our community in just an incredible way.

Lane Lowery — Obviously, you know, staff is growing. I remember when I got here, our full staff, we could meet in a, in a, in a, like a life group classroom. Now we have to meet in a large, you know, we’re up to 270 employees at this point…

Rich Birch — Wow. Yeah. Yep.

Lane Lowery — …on our, our six campuses, if you will. So we’ve just seen incredible, like said, we just seen the Lord do incredible things over the last 19 years.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Well, I’d love to talk about that, particularly the kind of leadership structure stuff. I know as we, it’s like, everyone sounds great. Let’s add a bunch of staff. Let’s grow that side.

Lane Lowery — Yeah.

Rich Birch — But that does come with some tension. um I’m sure, I’m sure you’ve bumped into things along there that have been a little bit tricky. Talk us through what, what does that look like as the kind of, as your structure has changed over these years?

Lane Lowery — You know, it’s kind of like going from, you know, having no kids to a child and then having two child, you know, two children. And then if you have multiples after that, you you’ve just got to change the way you parent.

Lane Lowery — And, and as our church has gone from one site location to really six now…

Rich Birch — Right.

Lane Lowery — …as as we when you you know think about the other campuses, we just came to a place where we realized a single church model of leadership no longer worked for where we were. You know going from one to two was was was a stretch, but going from two to six, has been a huge stretch.

Lane Lowery — And so as I shared with you, you know we’ve had ah exponential growth, especially over the past five years, Rich, you know adding the the additional campuses and and the additional, you know the the Hope Women’s Center and Hope Mental Wellness Center. You know, so going from two campuses to six campuses, we realized that our single single church yeah and then our dual church model, leadership model was no longer, it just wasn’t effective.

Lane Lowery — It became evident that Dr. McKinley and myself, that we couldn’t effectively oversee the operations and staff on each of our campuses. you know we’ve got incredibly gifted campus pastors and we had to equip and empower them to lead with vision, not just give them tasks, but give them vision and responsibility.

Lane Lowery — So the key tipping point that really caused us to to to regroup and to implement a new leadership structure was when we realized at one point we looked up and we had three different discipleship models going on at our four campuses.

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

Lane Lowery — Yeah, yeah. And as we we we noticed that that that just that’s just not to work.

Rich Birch — No, absolutely.

Lane Lowery — And so we also noticed that our former leadership structure didn’t promote, it didn’t promote the the unity and the and the collaboration that we really wanted from our staff team.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Lane Lowery — You know, it felt like our ministry teams, Rich, were in competition with one another rather than really working together as a team. We always use a statement, we’re better together. We really believe that.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Lane Lowery — But the way our our leadership model was structured, it didn’t promote unity. It didn’t promote um it collaboration. And we needed more team collaboration.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I love that. So yeah, just kind of stepping back statistically, 50% or around 50% of multi-site churches don’t get beyond, still are not getting beyond three locations. And I’m convinced a part of the reason why that is, is because of these issues that this, even just the structure stuff and how we interact with each other, it’s like, it’s working against what we’re trying to do. It’s it’s working against the mission that God’s called us to. So let’s get a little bit practical there.

Lane Lowery — Sure.

Rich Birch — Define in concrete terms. What do you mean? What are the roles? How does that all fit together? How do you, what’s the like, two minute explanation of how you talk about how you stuff gets done at Warren. What’s that look like?

Lane Lowery — Sure. So we we developed this, we call it a global leadership structure. And basically our global leadership team is it’s led by Pastor Andrew Bryan, who’s our executive pastor of ministries and leadership development. One of the best young leaders I’ve ever been around. And this team consists of the following ministry areas. So we have eight global ministry teams.

Lane Lowery — Our preschool and children’s team is led by Carol Young. Our next gen, which is our middle and high school team is led by Pastor Shane Padgett. Our spiritual formation and discipleship team is led by Pastor Corey Baxter. We have a local and and and global missions team, which is led by Pastor Mark Claiborne. We have a global worship team led by Pastor Joseph McKinley. We have a global communications and connections team led by Pastor Drew Robinson, a counseling and support group team led by Pastor Brett Legge. Then our Hope Women’s Center is led by Dr. Jacqueline Hyder.

Lane Lowery — Each of these people are player coaches. They’re overseeing an area of ministry on one of our campuses, but then they’re also overseeing the the greater, the overall ministry for all of the campuses.

Lane Lowery — For example, example Pastor Corey Baxter oversees our spiritual formation and discipleship. That’s our our life group ministry, our Sunday school ministry, if you will, and our discipleship groups and all of our discipleship ministry.

Lane Lowery — So Pastor Corey, he’s on our Grovetown campus and he is the day to day operations for that. But then he also kind of rises up to the 30,000 foot view and he oversees the discipleship and and spiritual formation ministry for all of our campuses. Which is why, we like I said, we got to a point where we looked up one day and we realized we had three different discipleship models going on you know within you know three of our our church campuses.

Lane Lowery — We thought this isn’t this isn’t right. This isn’t working well. So we thought let’s go to a global leadership model so that we have input and someone kind of overseeing over watching that for all of our campuses.

Lane Lowery — Like I said, these guys and girls are our player coaches. They’re they’re on boots on the ground on a campus, but then they rise up and lead the greater ministry of Warren as well.

Rich Birch — So like I’d love to double click on the player coach. That sounds like a conviction that you’ve had.

Lane Lowery — Yes, sir.

Rich Birch — That that’s like something, hey, we want to make sure we don’t just have like the head office people…

Lane Lowery — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …who like are like their whole job is head office. We want them grounded in local ministry. Talk us through that decision. What’s been maybe some of the upside of that, but then also some of the challenge of the player coach model.

Lane Lowery — Well, the the the challenge is it’s it’s a lot more to do.

Rich Birch — Right.

Lane Lowery — You know, they’ve got plenty to say grace over. Just like Pastor Corey, you know, our Grovetown church, they’re running over 2,000 every Sunday…

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Lane Lowery — …or about 1,500 every Sunday, about 1,500, excuse me, and And so he’s got plenty to say grace over just dealing with his own stuff with, with you know, we we believe that every person needs to be in a life group. You know we, you know, we believe every person needs to be in a discipleship relationship. So the challenge is saying, now hey, Pastor Corey, you’re doing a great job, but I’m going to add more to your more to your your your your table, you know.

Rich Birch — Yes. You’re so good at your job, we’re going to give you more.

Lane Lowery — Isn’t that how it works?

Rich Birch — Yes, absolutely.

Lane Lowery — You know find the busiest guy and give them more. But the good thing is we do have high capacity leaders, Rich. I mean, these, these folks are, so we’ve got to be careful not to, to overdo it and not to, you know, meet them to death. But you know, as well as I do, you got to have meetings. I mean, you have to.

Lane Lowery — And and so, so the, the, the, the stretch was, are we giving them too much? But they’ve risen to the, to the, to the challenge and they’ve done a great job. I’m so proud of our team. They’ve done such a great job. And they’re continuing to. So I think it’s a good thing that they’re still in, know, they’re still doing the work of the ministry because it to me, it brings credibility when they come to the table with an idea.

Rich Birch — Right.

Lane Lowery — They’re doing it.

Rich Birch — Right.

Lane Lowery — And so the down the only downfall we found is just that I got to be careful that I don’t burn my burn my folks out.

Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, that’s good. Okay, that’s good. Well, walk us through kind of the decision matrix. This is my language, not your your language, but oftentimes there’s like a global versus campus. There’s like, okay, where who gets to own what? What about local expression versus we’re doing this together as a church? What decisions are campus level by default? What’s get what’s get escalated across the entire church? Talk us through what that looks like.

Lane Lowery — Sure, sure. Well, we we have an executive leadership team and it consists of our senior pastor, Dr. McKinley. It consists of our our Grovetown, each of our campus pastors. ah Pastor Joseph Humphreys is on our Grovetown campus. Pastor Steven Newman is on our Belvedere campus. Pastor Andrew Skelton is on our Crossbridge campus. And then, of course, Andrew Bryan, our other executive pastor. So every Monday we we meet together and everything is funneled through that.

Lane Lowery — So we are constantly every Monday at two. We’re going we’re going to meet every Monday at two o’clock. And, um, and, and so therefore, you know, everything runs through that filter whenever, whenever we’re together. Our senior pastor and executive lead team that they set the vision. We set the vision for the church and the ministry and, you know, an easy example of ah of a global decision and how it translates to the campus level is like our life group ministry, Sunday school, if you will, our life group ministry.

Lane Lowery — We believe that, that biblical community is essential. And we expect every church campus to have a strategy to offer and promote promote life group ministry. You know, when a life group happens to determine, you know, it’s happened to determine at the campus level, you know, like, for example, Grovetown, all of their life groups meet off campus because they don’t have education space throughout the week.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Lane Lowery — So they all of their life groups are in homes during the week. Our other three campuses, we have a hybrid model where we have some groups on campus and some groups off campus. But at the end of the day, we’re going to do life group. We believe that’s a stack pole ministry, just like we’re going to have worship on Sunday morning. We are going to offer life groups. You can offer them on Sunday morning or you can offer them in in homes during the week. But we are going to offer life groups.

Lane Lowery — So that’s kind of one of those big picture things that that we are that we make sure is happening on each of our campuses that we’re intentional about that. We are intentionally trying to get people from the pew into the life group.

Lane Lowery — It’s a little bit more difficult when you take them from um you know being on campus versus in homes. You’ve got to be a little more intentional about it. But to me, that’s that’s one of those big picture items that that we you know we’re pretty hard, hard pressed. So we’re going to to have life groups.

Rich Birch — So again, I’m I’m trying, cause I know there’s people that are listening in that, that are living in the tension of this and they’re trying to sort this out. Talk me through the kind of, in other contexts, we’ve talked about the dotted line, solid line responsibility. So like, who is the first mover? So there’s something, using your example, there’s something happening in a campus like, hey, we’re not seeing, you know, maybe enough people are experiencing that kind of life group, biblical community. That’s not happening ah well in one campus. Which team is that is going to be the team that’s going to be like, okay, we got to solve this. Is it the global leadership team or the executive team or both, or a combo of both? Or how does that, how does that work together?

Lane Lowery — Yeah, that’s a great question. I’m counting on our global leads having their finger on the pulse of what’s going on with each of their areas of ministry.

Rich Birch — Okay. Yep.

Lane Lowery — You know, singly as as well as globally. Obviously as an executive team, we, we look at statistics every Monday.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Lane Lowery — I’ve got our, I get, I bring a report to that meeting every Monday on attendance on, you know, worship attendance, life group attendance, all of that. So you know, we’re, we’re seeing it as well, but, but I’m counting on my global leads to, to, to, that’s why it’s important that they’re also in the mix, not just leading…

Rich Birch — Right.

Lane Lowery — …but they’re also in the mix with it. So I’m counting on them to, to bring to us any issues or problems they may be facing or any hurdles that they need to try to get over. And then we can speak into that and help them do that. But that’s why we can’t be all places at all times, but, but that’s why we have teams that are doing that. So that’s really, has really helped.

Lane Lowery — And, and also going to this global leadership model, it’s it’s allowed us to employ more people into ministry who, like i said, aren’t just task people. They’re casting vision, said leading, and and so we’re counting on them to do that.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Okay. That’s good. How do you, um, kind of an adjacent issue, the global leadership team is the expectation that they’re getting out and seeing other campuses, like actually getting onto other locations on Sundays. What does that, what’s the rhythm look like on that front?

Lane Lowery — Yeah, that’s fantastic. Honestly, yes, Rich, they we need them to. And what we’ve challenged our staff to do, and it’s hard because like I said, you got enough to say grace over in your own on your own campus on a Sunday morning…

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. Yes.

Lane Lowery — …but we’ve challenged all of our staff to try to get to another campus at least one time during the year. That’s all staff people. That’s not just the global leads. That’s, you know, that’s a you know Beth Power, our our our Augusta preschool director, I’d love for Beth to be able to put her eyes on each of our campuses at least one time during during during the year. And they’re doing that.

Rich Birch — Right.

Lane Lowery — And when they do, it it brings greater you know unity. And she sees ideas. Every time I go to a new one of our other campuses, I see them doing something new. It’s so cool to see. Like I said, we’ve got incredibly gifted leaders and they’re smart and they’re doing great stuff. But I would never know about it if I didn’t go get on one of their campuses.

Lane Lowery — But we got to be intentional about it. It doesn’t just happen. Like I said, on Sunday morning, my home base, if you would be, is on the Augusta campus. But I’ve got to make myself say, no, I’m going to I’m going not be signed up for any new duties that this Sunday. I’m going to go to the Crossbridge campus this Sunday.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Lane Lowery — But it’s got to be an intentional. It’s like putting it on your calendar. I’ve got to do that or it won’t happen.

Rich Birch — Yeah, you got to plan for it. Yeah, absolutely.

Lane Lowery — So we constantly talk to our staff about doing that, especially for our global leads. I have to have them doing that.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. That’s great. Pivoting in a kind of a slightly different direction, but talking about obviously these same issues, um you had passed along a document that caught my attention, the eight essential practices document that really defines, talks through, you you know the behaviors really of your team. Talk us through how has this these eight essential practices, how have they helped really take this kind of thing from being like, those are nice ideas sitting on a wall somewhere…

Lane Lowery — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …to like actually making a difference in the way you operate. Talk us through this and we’ll put it, we’ll link to this in the show notes for folks that are listening in.

Lane Lowery — Sure, sure. Well, what you said is exactly what we didn’t want to happen. This came out of a strategic leadership meeting that our executive team went on almost two years ago now. And that’s what we, you know, you’ve done this too. You know, you’re an XP.

Lane Lowery — You go to a conference, something you get some great stuff and you and you bring it back. And next thing you know, it’s in a folder or it’s up on your shelf. We didn’t want to do that. So what we do, this is, so we constantly celebrate it. When we see somebody doing it, we celebrate it. Every person who is hired during the onboarding process, this is part of the onboarding process. They get a copy of this and their leader, their supervisor reviews it with them.

Lane Lowery — We do biannual reviews. We have review in March and in April, excuse me, September and and in April. And our September review is literally, they are reviewed on how they are um working through the eight essential practices.

Rich Birch — That’s great.

Lane Lowery — Each of these are on that review and we walk through that with them and we talk through that with them. You know, so, so we, like I said, so we make sure that that that we are, it but it’s becoming a part of our DNA. It’s only two years old, but it really is now becoming our DNA.

Lane Lowery — We send out a a monthly email um staff email, because again, you’ve got so much going on try to keeping trying to keep everyone informed of what’s going on, upcoming events. We celebrate birthdays and and you know staff anniversaries. And we always highlight a an eight essential, somebody who who’s done the eight essential practices.

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.

Lane Lowery — Plus there’s always a link in that, Rich, that if you see somebody doing that, you can click on that link and type up a little synopsis, you know sharing some information, how they saw so-and-so, you know, exhibiting one of these practices. So we’re really trying to push this in, making it part of our DNA.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I love it. It’s so good. One of the ones that caught me, there’s a lot of—friends, I would encourage you to check out this document and go and do likewise. You know, don’t rip off their stuff, but come up with your your own on this. But one of the ones that caught my attention was ah connect with people.

Rich Birch — So one of the misnomers about very large churches like yours is that people aren’t connected, that it’s just everybody coming to the show. That’s actually statistically not true. Churches over 2,000 have a higher percentage of people connected to small groups and in volunteering opportunities than a church under 200. What specific behaviors do you expect from your staff to keep the ministry as high touch as possibly can as a large church?

Rich Birch — And how do you, how does it measure that? What’s that actually look like?

Lane Lowery — Sure. Great question, man. That’s a great question. We always use the word, in order to grow bigger, we got to grow smaller. Obviously, we got to get people in life groups and in that small group community. But we place a high value on our First Impressions Team ministry. And therefore, we have paid. We have a paid person who oversees our F.I.T. ministry—First Impressions Team—on each of our campuses because it’s so important, especially on a large church.

Lane Lowery — You know, we’ll have over 2000 people on the Augusta campus on Sunday morning. We want people to be seen and known and welcomed. And so we call every first time guest. Now, on typical Sunday, we’ll have 70 first time guest guests across our our four campuses, but they will get a personal phone call within that week.

Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.

Lane Lowery — We we make sure that that it’s happening within that week. And our Connections Pastor helps facilitate that. So we have, you know, first time you know guest calls. If you’re a first time guest on a campus, we give you a gift and we we want to engage with them. We still visit people in the hospitals.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Lane Lowery — We place a high priority on that, Rich. We you know we’ve got hospital lists from each of our campuses and we we have a person we have you know pastors on staff who go visit folks in hospitals. We pray with people before surgeries. We visit our shut-in our shut-in members. And so we we really do place a high value on that.

Lane Lowery — One of the best things is our senior pastor has a gift of shepherding. He’s a pastor shepherd. And so he exhibits that behavior as well. But it is a high value for us. And we spend time talking about it and we invest money in it.

Rich Birch — That’s so good. I love that. Friends, I want to underline something. You blew over it really quick, but I want to underline something here. You talked about 70, you know, guests a week, all getting personal calls.

Rich Birch — I’ve said this in other contexts. You know, we’ve talked about that kind of thing being a best practice. Like, hey, we’ve got to reach out to people. We can’t just send them an email. We got to try to connect. So friends, that’s over 3,500 calls a year that this church is doing. That’s a commitment to, I’ve had churches much smaller than your church say, there’s no way we can organize to call five people a week, 10 people a week.

Rich Birch — Friends, you got to do that kind of thing. That’s what a great inspiration for us. Another one of these, again, friends, check the link below that really caught my eye was, I don’t think I’ve ever seen this in a change document quite, or like a culture document like, like this.

Rich Birch — You said leverage change to move the mission. It talks about the idea of how flexibility and kind of looking for what’s going to you know need to be adapted in the future is embedded in your staff culture. So what did you stop doing? What’s that look like? How are you simplifying?

Lane Lowery — Yeah.

Rich Birch — I love that that’s embedded right in your staff essentials. Love that.

Lane Lowery — Well, I mean, something immediately came to mind is we changed our worship times, you know, um and and that’s no, I mean, that’s a…

Rich Birch — It’s a big deal.

Lane Lowery — …pretty big deal, but we changed our worship times on all four of our campuses. And two of our campuses, we added more time between the worship services so that they could onload and offload their campuses. Because of, so you know, praise God. I mean, it’s a winner’s problem, you know, because so many people are coming.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Lane Lowery — So at the end of the day, we said, you know, the we loved our our original times, but we we had to do something different to help with the with the growth situation. So we changed our worship times and you know and went through that whole process of doing that across. And we even allowed ourselves to allow different campuses to to to to set up times that’s bet that best fits them.

Lane Lowery — You know i’m saying? We’re not like, well, bless God, everybody’s going to do it at this time, at that time. We’re saying, look, what what works best in your individual context? So we you know that’s what we did. We just that that was the thing that came to my mind immediately. That’s something we just did within the last year was change those worship times. And it made sense. Because we were setting away how we did it for many, many years, but it’s worked really well.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. Well, I love how, you know, what you’re hearing, friends that are listening in, you’re hearing, here’s a church that took some bold steps to try to change their structure, to try to better have their structure better serve where they were as a church and looking to the future, which is fantastic. I think inspiration for lots of us as we’re thinking about those kinds of issues.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I want to leverage you as a coach. Let’s say there’s a church listening in today who knows, maybe it’s an XP of a church of 1500. And they’re like, gosh, we know that maybe our structure not working. We’re at that, you know we’ve launched a couple locations. We’re trying to stretch to three or four. We’ve got vision for that.

Rich Birch — What would be some first steps, maybe 30 day, 60 day, 90 day steps that you would suggest that a church leader would take based on where you’ve gone through as you’ve kind of, um you know, reoriented your structure, tried to get better on this front. Help us think about that.

Lane Lowery — That’s a great question, Rich. First, I think you got to be willing to admit your structure is outdated or it’s not working.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Lane Lowery — You know, change is hard and and and, you know, not a whole lot of people like change, but it’s one of our essentials. So we’ve we’ve got to be able to embrace it and be willing to to look at things differently.

Lane Lowery — Second, I think your leadership um has to be willing to change.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Lane Lowery — You know, you you know, if if one guy on the staff wants to do it but no one else does. Well, that’s that’s gonna be tough. Third, you you need to identify where you currently are and where you want to go and the why behind It’s kind of like the old statement where you start with the end in mind.

Lane Lowery — You know, don’t, I don’t think you need to change just for this you know to change, but if something’s not working, and and you need to you need to know the why. If this it’s not, then you got to be willing to embrace it and and work to make the change.

Lane Lowery — Next, I think you got to develop a new leadership structure that’ll help you accomplish your desired outcome. Look at what you’re doing. I called a number of churches before we did this.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s good.

Lane Lowery — I mean, I really cut and looked and I saw some things that were happening. I tell you, Family Church down in for yeah down in West Palm is doing a great job. And honestly, I modeled our ministry after what they’re doing.

Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.

Lane Lowery — It fits us, our context.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that.

Lane Lowery — But they had it figured out, man. And I’m not afraid to go find out you know what other people are doing. That’s that’s winning.

Rich Birch — 100%.

Lane Lowery — Then seek buy-in from your key leaders and stakeholders. What we did was was once we started, you know, developing this structure, I went to those those those team leads that we had identified. And I sat down and myself and Andrew Bryan, our other executive pastor, sat down and had conversation with them. And we really shared with them the why, because guess what? We’re getting ready to add a bunch of stuff to their plate. And and and they had to I had to have their buy in before it to work. And praise the Lord, they all bought in, man. They saw their they saw the need for it. They felt the pain of not doing it.

Lane Lowery — So, you know, so we we met with we took the time to have hour long meetings with all of those key stakeholders and they got and got their buy-in. And finally, we made the change. You know, we just finally had to jump and do it.

Rich Birch — What was the timeline, you know, in your from like, hey, I think we need to make a change through research phase all the way through to adoption? How long did that process take?

Lane Lowery — I’m embarrassed to tell you about a year. I would figure it’s something like that.

Rich Birch — No, that’s not unreal.

Lane Lowery — Yeah.

Rich Birch — I say that because it’s like, it doesn’t it it can’t happen overnight if you’re going to do it well.

Lane Lowery — Yeah.

Rich Birch — You know and and you’ve got to walk people through it. That does that makes sense. So about a year, that that’s good. What part of it was the longest piece of the the puzzle?

Lane Lowery — Figuring out exactly how it would work in our context. You know, I saw what Family Church was doing there. Now no they’re, I think they’re up to 15 campuses or something like that.

Rich Birch — Right.

Lane Lowery — But I saw, you know, and so seeing what they were doing as well as some other churches and then saying, OK, how can this really work for Warren Church? How can it really? And so really figuring that out and then presenting that to our our our senior pastor and our our global pastors. Because at the end of the day, their people are are are going to have to take on more responsibility and do some things. And so getting getting there buy-in. And the cool thing, that was a pretty quick buy-in on their part.

Lane Lowery — And then implementing it. So just developing that whole structure and showing the need for it and then implementing it was about about about a year.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. That that you know that doesn’t surprise me at all. I think it takes time to work it through. I love the idea of listening to other churches. Obviously, that’s actually at the core of why we started this podcast was you know we’re 800 and some odd episodes in. I really do think, man, there’s ah we should be working together as a body of Christ…

Lane Lowery — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …and somebody else has faced most of the problems that we face as a church. Let’s go find them, talk with them, ask those questions.

Rich Birch — So this has been fantastic. As we come to kind of land today’s episode, anything else you’d love to share? Any kind of final words or encouragements that people might be listening in today?

Lane Lowery — Yeah, I think, Rich, I think that the biggest thing is communication, you know, amongst our staff.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Lane Lowery — You know, we we we’ve grown so much, which has been incredible. And we’ve added so many more staff members. And and I know a lot of people don’t like meetings and I don’t like to have meetings for the sake of meeting. That’s why I encourage every person if you’re gonna have a meeting, make sure you have an agenda, make sure you have a set time, but but you gotta get together.

Lane Lowery — And and so I think the biggest thing that’s helped us to make for this move to be successful. And it has been successful. I’m really encouraged by that is, is we have an executive leadership meeting every Monday at two o’clock.

Lane Lowery — Our global leaders meet twice a month. Our global leaders meet with their teams twice a month.

Rich Birch — That’s so good.

Lane Lowery — Every campus has a Tuesday at two o’clock staff meeting every week. And and that’s for some people go, my gosh, that’s that’s six meetings. But yeah, it it is. But they’re meetings with purpose.

Rich Birch — Yep, that’s good.

Lane Lowery — And and they’re not, you know, three and a half hour meetings there, you know, 45 minutes to an hour um with with an agenda, with action steps. When the meeting’s over, people walk out of there knowing what the next thing with what the next thing is.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Lane Lowery — But being willing to do that and seeing that that it really is important because there’s so many moving parts. And if we’re not all on the same page, something’s going to break down.

Rich Birch — 100%.

Lane Lowery — But it it takes getting together face-to-face, you know, email when you when you need to, but those face-to-face meetings are really important.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I agree. Totally. And well And even the way you’re thinking about it there, I think is critical for folks to lean in on is thinking clearly on kind of what the system of meetings is, like when is the best time to have the right meeting? I love the idea of like, hey, all are the thing like you’ve said, hey, our campus teams all have a Tuesday at two meeting. It’s like predictable. We know exactly.

Rich Birch — We’ve got to make this we’ve got to make the rhythm of what we do the weekly. Hey, every weekend so it comes, whether we like it or not…

Lane Lowery — Yes, sir.

Rich Birch — …use that rhythm to help us push the culture forward rather than being kind of overwhelmed by it.

Rich Birch — Well, Lane, this has been a fantastic conversation. I really appreciate you investing time in us today. If people want to connect with you or connect with the church, where do we want to send them online?

Lane Lowery — Yeah, just go to Warren.Church, and that that’s our website. And you connect with me right there my on the staff page. My email address LaneL at Warren.Church.

Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much, Lane. Appreciate being here today, sir.

Lane Lowery — Blessings to you, Rich. Thank you.