Building Community in Growing Churches

Thanks for joining us for this special episode of the unSeminary podcast as we kick off All About Multisite month. In this conversation, we’re joined by Rick Langston and Daniel Simmons from The Summit Church in North Carolina. Rick serves as the Executive Pastor of Strategic Initiatives, and Daniel is the Executive Pastor of Campuses and Central Discipleship.

Are you thinking about expanding your church through multi-site? Wondering how to do it effectively while maintaining mission and vision alignment? Tune in to learn powerful insights on how to grow a multi-site church that stays united, impactful, and rooted in mission.

• One church with many locations. // The Summit Church began in 1961 and experienced a pivotal shift in the 2000s under the leadership of J.D. Greear. Embracing a church planting mindset, they transitioned into a multi-site model that now includes a dozen campuses throughout the Raleigh-Durham (RDU) area. Initially driven by necessity—after selling their building and meeting in a high school—they soon recognized multisite as a strategic advantage for reaching their city.
• Identity and mission clarity. // It’s important for campuses to identify primarily as The Summit Church, not just their local location. While each campus has freedom to contextualize ministry to its community, all locations remain unified under shared mission, values, and vision. This alignment allows flexibility in how they bless their neighborhoods while preserving alignment in purpose.
• Who is the decision maker? // In a multisite environment, there is often a tension between campus teams and central teams around decision-making. To reduce confusion and clarify responsibilities, The Summit has developed two frameworks: CORE, for central teams, and PACE, for campus teams. These dual frameworks operate as two different sides of the same coin, functioning together to achieve the vision.
• CORE and PACE. // CORE is an acronym which represents: Collaborate across ministries, Own the vision and set common strategy, Resource campus teams through coaching and training and Evaluate ministry effectiveness and strategic goals. Similarly, PACE stands for: Pastor and shepherd the congregation, Advance the church’s mission and vision locally, Collaborate with central teams and peers and Execute ministries with excellence and creativity.
• Build relationships and culture. // Strong relationships between teams are essential. As their staff has grown, The Summit intentionally prioritizes relational health. They host monthly all-staff meetings with worship and learning, and biannual retreats for rest and bonding. These regular touchpoints help reinforce culture and foster trust, which is vital for collaborative success across campuses.
• Create a leadership development pipeline. // The Summit’s leadership pipeline has been instrumental in its growth. The church benefits from proximity to a seminary and has a robust internal development track through The Summit Institute, an apprenticeship and residency program for individuals pursuing full-time ministry. Participants raise support to work at the church and they receive hands-on training, spiritual development, and real leadership opportunities, which can lead to permanent staff roles. The church benefits from getting to know potential hires and identifying those who align with the church’s vision.
• Both multisite and church planting. // While The Summit Church is deeply committed to church planting nationally and globally, its multisite strategy remains regional—limited to the RDU area. Outside of RDU, The Summit supports church plants rather than additional campuses.

Visit The Summit Church at summitchurch.com and explore their church planting collaborative at summitcollaborative.org. Prepare for ministry with The Summit Institute Apprenticeship and Residency by visiting summitrduinstitute.com. You can also find information about J.D. Greear Ministries at jdgreear.com.

EXTRA CREDIT // Struggling with decision clarity in your multisite church?

Inside unSeminary Extra Credit, you’ll get access to our Multisite Clarity Worksheet—a practical tool inspired by The Summit Church’s CORE & PACE model. It’s designed to help your team define decision-making roles, align central and campus leaders, and avoid the confusion that stalls growth.

Use this resource to:

• Pinpoint who owns what across key ministry areas
• Help bring clarity to central vs. campus responsibilities
• Evaluate your current leadership structure
• Take actionable steps toward better alignment

This is just one of the powerful tools available in our All About Multisite bonus content inside unSeminary Extra Credit.

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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!

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

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Episode Transcript

Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Man, I am so glad that you’ve joined us for All About Multisite month here. This is going to be an incredible discussion today with The Summit Church. This church began in 1961 when Pastor Sam James founded a church with the mission of reaching the world with the gospel. You maybe have heard of The Summit uh this is a prolific church. They’re involved in church planting, multi-site, J.D. Greear is the lead pastor there. They ah have repeatedly been one of the fastest growing churches in the country and currently have, if I’m counting right, a dozen locations in the triangle in North Carolina, plus services in Spanish, and church online, have planted churches both nationally and internationally. Today we have, not one, but two leaders: Rick Langston with us—he is the executive pastor of strategic initiatives—and Daniel Simmons—he is the executive pastor of campuses and central discipleship. I am so glad that you guys are with us. Welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.

Daniel Simmons — Yeah, thanks. It’s great to be with you.

Rich Birch — Nice. So good.

Rick Langston — Yeah, thank you, Rich.

Rich Birch — Rick, why don’t we start with you? You know, The Summit has evolved over the years and you’ve been around for a few years. Kind of give us the history, for folks that aren’t aware, and that with a particular emphasis on church planting and multi-site. How does that intersect with The Summit story?

Rick Langston — Well, the church, like you said, has been around since the early 60s. I came on staff as associate pastor in the early 90s, actually. And it was a church that really had a, um, had a lot of potential, but did not have unified vision as a church. It was like, as a multi-site church, I always, I always get to share church history with our new staff. And I tell them we’re, we’re one church in many locations. We used to be many churches in one location.

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

Rick Langston — And, uh, everybody had their own idea about why we existed. Um, and it was a, it’s a, it’s a, actually went through an interim in the late 90s that lasted over three years where God really used that kind of bring a core group of people together with a vision to like, we’re going to put our yes on the table and we want to see at least us to start reaching our community. God had started to move among some of our leaders in terms of international missions. We had interim pastor who was um a professor of of missions. And so that kind of started to take root in the church.

Rick Langston — And actually at the time, J.D. Greear was in the area. He was a PhD student. He was, he was, had been connected the church before just as, you know, coming to help out some while he was in seminary. And so he came on our staff as a college pastor during that time. Eventually as the church kind of really really kind of gelled around this idea of like, we want to see, be a church that reaches our community and reaches the world.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Rick Langston — We turned the J.D., who was in his 20s at the time, and and called him to be our our lead pastor. And he kicked off right off the bat of like, let’s let’s look at ourselves as a new church plant. Let’s put everything on the table. This is when we made a and ah shift in our name. We were Homestead Heights Baptist Church at the time. And called, you know, came with the name The Summit Church. And just tried to do, just tried to think like a church plant. And God just moved.

Rick Langston — We were seeing people come from—we’re in The Triangle, Raleigh-Durham, RDU, as we call it. And we would have, it we were having people, we were in ah one point of the Triangle, the Northern, North Durham area. We started having college students come from Chapel Hill, UNC Chapel Hill. We were having families come from Raleigh. And were first, we thought, like well, we need to sell our building and buy a property where we can build a big mega building.

Rick Langston — And so we actually sold our building. We couldn’t find the land. We kept looking for the land, but we sold our building in the meantime to another church. And we had to move into a high school after we’d been around for 40 years and we’re moving into a high school…

Rich Birch — Wow.

Rick Langston — …you know, with this established church and that we were there for a couple of years. It just was like, God closed a lot of doors to lead us. If yeah that makes sense.

Rich Birch — Right. Wow. Yeah, absolutely.

Rick Langston — Like, you know, he shepherded patiently, he, you know, our mission statements, following the Holy spirit, um, to make disciple-making disciples in Raleigh and around the world. And following in the Holy Spirit, that part is just like, you know, we have a plan, but God’s plan is always better. And he just, he kind of just keeps opening and closing doors. And so, ah you know, our people were really trusting because otherwise you would think they thought we didn’t know what we were doing.

Rich Birch — Sure.

Rick Langston — You know, they were like with us on it.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Rick Langston — And, um, so eventually we ended up, you know, not only having to sell our building, but basically relocate the church to about, about, about 25, 30 minutes to a new location.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Rick Langston — And when we found a kind of a permanent, semi-permanent facility, we can move into. And so at that point we were like, we actually had bought a small building in our, near our original location, but we couldn’t get the land around it to develop. But we had a small church building that sat 200.

Rich Birch — OK.

Rick Langston — And so we were going to make this, and we were running like 1,500 in a high school.

Rich Birch — Right. Wow.

Rick Langston — And so…

Rich Birch — That’s a lot of services. You got to do 23 services every Sunday to make that work.

Rick Langston — Yeah, well, the high school was…Yeah, that little… So, so um but we’ve been reaching a lot of people like that were driving 25, 30 minutes. So the new location was closer to a lot where a lot of the new people were coming from.

Rick Langston — And so were just like, I remember J.D.’s just like… You know, that the book, Multisite Church Revolution… It was not, hadn’t been out that long, you know, since like 2007.

Rich Birch — Right. Yep.

Rick Langston — And we were just like reading that, talking to people at Life Church, different churches. And it was kind of like this. And then somebody was like, hey, Rick, why don’t you be the campus pastor? And we’ll just use that building over here for some folks. And it was like, so I I pastored sort of like where the original congregation came from.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Rick Langston — So I had I had all the senior adults in the church…

Rich Birch — Okay.

Rick Langston — …and some of the families. And we went, and in 2007, we went straight, you know, video, streaming. And there were only complaints where we didn’t have a choir anymore. So, I mean, they were, they were like watching the video, like it was just normal. And we moved, so the majority of the congregation moved in the new facility.

Rick Langston — So we’d really backed it to multi-site. We started a third campus location, very much the same way, just like because, you know, found somebody a place and was like, it was like grab a staff member in a hallway and make him a campus pastor like three weeks later, you know.

Rich Birch — Right, right, right, right. Opportunistic. Hey, there’s something here. We got to go make that happen. Yeah, yeah. Interesting.

Rick Langston — Yeah. We got a lot of coaching like Jim Tomberlin. We engaged, worked with him and that those early days. He helped kind of help us game plan. um I just spent an hour with him on the phone one day and wrote up a plan for our fourth launch…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Rick Langston — …which was the campus that Daniel, was the campus pastor of.

Rich Birch — Okay. Love it.

Rick Langston — So it was like for the fourth one, we actually had a strategy…

Rich Birch — Yes. I love that.

Rick Langston — …for a beginning strategy for multi-site. And, um…

Rich Birch — So Rick, would you say it was around there that at the, somewhere around three or four that it went from, Hey, like, we’re just trying to keep up to like, maybe, oh well, maybe God’s leading us to do this. Like maybe we should strategically, you know, was was that, was, it was there a turning point somewhere in at that point, Rick?

Rick Langston — Yeah, I mean, just having this kind of mindset that we put our yes on the table and we do whatever it takes to to to reach our community.

Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.

Rick Langston — When we started doing multi-site, we started seeing some advantages right away. Well first, like going from one to two sites, we were we we tried to coach our people, choose your location, not just based on where it’s going to be best for you to reach your community. And so our vision for the city just expanded. We’re we’re are a multi-site church that works in like all of our campuses are in this this metropolitan area, the Raleigh-Durham Triangle. So we have them, they’re all within an hour of each other and probably all within kind of a half hour of the center of this this area. And but we started to see, we’re having an impact on the city in multiple locations. you know when we

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

Rick Langston — And because we one of the things that God had done our church is we started to have a heart to you know be a blessing to our city, bring joy to the city. So when we be like launched the North Raleigh campus that Daniel led, there were already people that lived in that community. They were already serving schools and under-resourced areas. And so it was like there was a congregation already there.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yep.

Rick Langston — And the campus became a place for them to meet and and do ministry at.

Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s great.

Rick Langston — But it was definitely kind of a learn as you go process, you know.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Daniel, how would you kind of sticking with the helping us get our heads around what’s happening at The Summit? If you were to bump into somebody at a conference and they were to say, well, describe multi-site at The Summit in those we so we’ll start with those in that in that kind of 30 hour, 30 minute radius. How would you describe what does multi-site look like for you guys? What do you have in common? How like, how does how does it all work?

Daniel Simmons — Yeah.

Rich Birch — What’s that look like?

Daniel Simmons — Yeah. I mean, I I think that like a lot of multi churches, multi-site churches are going to say we’re one church in many locations.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Daniel Simmons — But we really do try to to live in the tension of, we are primarily The Summit Church. And so, uh, like if I, if I visit a campus and, and I hear them talk about their identity and they only talk about their identity, as the campus and they never talk about The Summit Church, then I’m probably going to talk to that campus pastor, uh, pull them together at the end and say, Hey, uh, I love that you love this congregation. I want you to, I want to be passionate. I want you to be passionate about this community, especially reaching and blessing this community. But you are primarily The Summit Church in this community, not the campus that is in this community.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Daniel Simmons — And I think the reason for that is because ah our our mission and our values are what make us distinct. And I think those are worth living for.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Daniel Simmons — And I don’t, I want to keep a tight focus on those things. It’s not really a tight focus on control. There’s actually, I want to give some freedom in how we live those out, especially how we live out reaching lost people with the gospel. I think there’s a lot of room for creativity, especially how we do life on life ministry and especially how we how we bless that community. Because I think those things can be very contextualized. But when it comes to the values of who we are, our mission, and the things that we we really long to accomplish long-term, that is what makes us The Summit Church. And so I want to be very clear with people that that’s how we do multi-site.

Daniel Simmons — Another thing is like how we launch our campuses and where we launch our campuses. So kind of what Rick said is really right, and and it’s and this probably helped even shape what I just said. But when I stepped into being a campus pastor, you know, I was 31 years old. I’d been doing college ministry. But what I stepped into was a group of people that were dedicated to the gospel of Jesus Christ, which I had already seen because we had been attending The Summit Church, and they were dedicated to reaching their area. In fact, they wanted a campus there because that what they were saying ah was that, like, we’re willing to drive 25 minutes. But our lost friends…

Rich Birch — Yeah, they won’t.

Daniel Simmons — …are that that there’s about 10 minute drive that they’re willing to make. And after that, they’re like, hey, it’s just a reason not to go.

Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.

Daniel Simmons — And so they were living out the mission and the values of The Summit. And I was like, well, man, we’ll just we’ll put a campus there and I’ll continue to lead out that mission just in a different location.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Daniel Simmons — And so I would say that, like, we need to have a group of people there, about 200 to 250 people to launch a campus.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Daniel Simmons — Obviously, you’ve got to have a location. That’s just logistics that can that can support the type of growth that we’re praying for and and hopefully living in such a way to see happen. And then obviously, you’ve got to have a good you got to have a good leader and a good leadership team to go.

Daniel Simmons — So I would say that those are some of the things if someone asked me right off the bat, I would say like we’re one church and this is what that means ah around mission and and vision. And then obviously, we want to have we want to have some kind of launching point…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Daniel Simmons — …a group of people that are that are dedicated to the church.

Rich Birch — Okay, so you you brought up the T word, tension, not me. So ah you know that I appreciate what you’re saying that, hey, we’re trying to align around the mission and values, but I know that that can cause some tension on, hey, like in our local expression, I this is what that looks like for us. Unpack that a little bit more, Daniel, just around… Okay, so explain that a little bit more. What what is what is that tension that maybe other churches have struggled with? And how do you manage that? Really, we’re talking about this kind of campus versus—I know you don’t think about it like that—

Daniel Simmons — Right.

Rich Birch — …campus versus central, but but how do we how do you manage that at The Summit?

Daniel Simmons — Yeah, I mean, I think it really comes down to just, and if I can just boil it down, would be who makes the final call on decisions.

Rich Birch — Good, yep.

Daniel Simmons — So who is the decision maker? Honestly, I don’t think it gets a ton more complicated than that.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Daniel Simmons — You’ve got one group of people that thinks something should be done one way. You’ve got another group of people that thinks it should be done another way. In a multi-site church, ah there ah the the question just becomes who makes the final call?

Rich Birch — Okay.

Daniel Simmons — That’s the tension.

Rich Birch — And yeah. And how do you, how do you define that? What’s the shorthand for that? Helping someone understand when, or, or maybe when you see someone trip over, Oh, you’re, you’re making a final call on something you shouldn’t be. Or you think you’re making a final call, which it’s not your final call. How do you, how do you define that for someone, Daniel?

Daniel Simmons — Right, well, so we’ve actually created multi-site philosophy.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Daniel Simmons — It’s ah we’ve got we’ve got a philosophy for what central ministries do and how they should approach their jobs. And these are the things that you are responsible for.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Daniel Simmons — And that document covers all of our central ministries for the most part.

Rich Birch — Right.

Daniel Simmons — And then we’ve got the same the same document um with the same purpose for all of our campus ministries. So every single job on a campus…

Rich Birch — Love it.

Daniel Simmons — …I kind of tell our teams, if you don’t know what to do in the morning, you look at this document. And if you do one of those four things, because it’s four things for both teams, if you do one of those four things, at a pretty high level, you can go home and feel great about what what you’ve done that day.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Daniel Simmons — And we call it core and pace. So our central ministries are core and our campus teams are pace and they’re in an acronym and I can walk through those eventually if you want to. But so we lay it out for them. So we want to communicate very clearly. This is what you do. And then also kind of at the end of the day, I think a lot of people want a real clear answer to who is the decision maker. Is it this one person?

Rich Birch — Right.

Daniel Simmons — And I would say the truth is, is that in a big organization that is as complex as ah as as a church like ours with 13 different campuses and tons of great leaders, there is almost no decision that is a single person who makes it.

Rich Birch — Right.

Daniel Simmons — Almost all of our…

Rich Birch — Multiplicity of leadership. Yeah, for sure.

Daniel Simmons — That’s right, collaboration is key.

Rick Langston — Right. Absolutely.

Daniel Simmons — In fact, in core and pace, you’ll notice the letter C…

Rich Birch — Yes. Love it.

Daniel Simmons — …and and both sides, it’s collaboration.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Daniel Simmons — The best decisions are made in plurality.

Rich Birch — Love it. We’re going to come back to core and pace there um in ah in a minute. So I want to double, we’ll put a little bookmark in that. Rick, um related, similar issue, but looking at it from just a slightly different lens, how how does The Summit ensure that you continue to foster strong relationships? So more on the relational side, less the kind of job description-y type stuff, because we know, hey, if I if i trust that person, then I can make core and pace work. But what are you doing to ensure that you kind of relationally are connected on those two sides, Rick?

Rick Langston — Well, it really starts with the staff and serving the staff. And so, know, our really lead pastor of ministries who oversees all the staff, number two to J.D., I would say that whenever he talks about his role, is David Thompson, that’s really kind of one of the first things he talks about, just like serving our staff well and trying to help them, you know. So we we invest a lot in terms of developing staff, and training and just trying to create an environment where they just enjoy being with one another, which is our staff has become very large.

Rick Langston — And I think we went through these growing pains where I described having come from the background I did in the church and the, you know, the parking lot conversations you can have in churches and things like that. I got, we got to a place where I’m like, our staff is like work is like a small church

Rich Birch — Yeah, 100%.

Rick Langston — And they can have all the problems of a small church…

Rich Birch — Right.

Rick Langston — …unless they are also focused in the same direction. So we actually, you know, for a long time, our, our mission was pretty loosely defined, you know, it was, and J.D. would just want some, you know, he would, he would talk to staff. He would normally say just two things like, Hey, we just, when we started this, we wanted to follow the Holy Spirit, do whatever we could do to reach everybody.

Rick Langston — And we had, we had come back in 2019. We, rewrote or or really just kind of expanded on that with our mission and values. So this is, you know, almost 20 years into our relaunch.

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

Rick Langston — And, but we had do that because we would start to have staff asking questions like, why are we, why are we at another campus? And it’s like, almost like, you know, that’s like a church member. Haven’t we reached enough people?

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.

Rick Langston — And we’re like, that’s not the core of who we are. That’s not our heartbeat. That’s not what got us here. And so just making sure, you know, reinforcing those values, reinforcing our staff values with staff. And it is just, whether you’re in a multi-site church or not is, you know, you can do that in a, in a, you know, there was a day when all the staff went to lunch together. You know, we’d have staff meeting and then go lunch. And then one day we showed up and we didn’t fit in the restaurant.

Rich Birch — Right.

Rick Langston — And so it’s like, you have to start to, you have to start to create teams and try to scale that and reproduce that. And it’s just, I’ll tell you, it’s it’s challenging. And I think that a mistake we made for a long time was assuming the best. Like we actually teach our staff to assume the best. Like that’s a value.

Rich Birch — Sure. Yes.

Rick Langston — Like we want them to assume the best towards one another, but we were you can’t assume that an organization is just going to function like that with that value without reinforcing it constantly.

Daniel Simmons — Right.

Rick Langston — And, you know, so…

Rich Birch — What what would be what would be some practical steps that as you as the team has grown, that you’ve taken as ah as an organization, Rick, to kind of reinforce that value to ensure that you, because it goes from, um you know, it just kind of happens to, okay, now we intentionally need to make sure that we’re in embedding that. What would be a couple of those things you’ve done to embed that into the culture?

Rick Langston — Well, I think Daniel could speak to some of this. and I think because I one of the things I think is that we we need to evaluate towards it. I mean, it needs to be an expectation that people are prioritizing their relationships, not only within their own teams, but with the teams they work alongside.

Rick Langston — We do have we just we have a monthly all staff. That’s a mandatory time. But it’s also really like, you know, you get to get fed. We’re going to worship together, going to we’re going learn together. And we’re going to enjoy that time together, you know, an annual or semi or a biannual retreat that’s mostly ah focused around rest and restoration and having fun and not ah not a calendaring retreat.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Rick Langston — um You know, a a just let’s get away and have a break together. you know

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Rick Langston — So ah those are kind of ah some of the practices.

Daniel Simmons — Yeah.

Rich Birch — That’s good. Well, Daniel…

Daniel Simmons — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …I’d love to hear about how you’re helping, you know, that your your campus leaders and central leaders, really this set core and pace idea you kind of hinted towards.

Daniel Simmons — Yeah.

Rich Birch — How are you structuring those conversations so that there’s clarity there? And what’s that look like?

Daniel Simmons — Right, well, I try to approach it from the sense of like, I’m trying to build a culture. And so the documents just give words to the type of culture that we want to kind of have.

Rich Birch — Yep. That’s good. Yep.

Daniel Simmons — And and so I also think like if I were to kind of tag on just a little bit with what Rick said, I think like building this kind of culture takes a lot of work.

Rich Birch — So good.

Daniel Simmons — And sometimes it takes more work than we think it will, especially with we have, as leaders, I actually think that’s one of our primary jobs. Our primary job is creating the culture and reminding people all the time.

Rich Birch — That’s good. Right.

Daniel Simmons — And I don’t think that ever actually ends. And so core and pace, the reason I even kind of bring it up is because I try to talk about it a lot. And I try to talk about it from the sense of I want both sides to know core and pace. Usually when I hand it out, ah oh they’re both on one page. So core is on one page, pace is on the other. And I try to put it on one document in the sense of like, we’re one church.

Rich Birch — Right.

Daniel Simmons — So we’re kind of like two sides of the same coin. The coin functions, the coin does the same thing. Like if I hand you a 25 cent piece, a quarter, it’s, it doesn’t matter what side you’re looking at, you understand it’s a quarter. Um, uh, and so the same thing is true about The Summit. We have one vision, uh, and we’re, we’re both doing different things to help that, to help that vision happen and achieve that vision. And so I just think like, I think Patrick Lencioni uses the term chief reminding officers.

Rich Birch — It’s true.

Daniel Simmons — And so I think that that’s what our leaders do. We’re trying to build a culture at The Summit Church, uh, where we where we really do give each other benefit of the doubt. We’re dedicated to the mission. We live out the values really well. And that just takes, I think that takes a level of intentionality.

Daniel Simmons — And so a couple of things that I’ve done, especially with like core and pace. I mean, one is that ah our central discipleship team, so adult discipleship and next gen, used to be under ah under two different executives. So I was over campuses, Another executive was over those ministries. And one of the things that I saw was they just don’t spend enough time together.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Daniel Simmons — And so the natural questions that like um our campuses are talking about, like in their meetings and ah kind of, especially around their, their, their non-meeting meetings, like around the water cooler and ah the type of things, right.

Rich Birch — The meeting after the meeting?

Daniel Simmons — Which is usually the more important meeting, right?

Rich Birch — Yes, exactly.

Rick Langston — I don’t get invited.

Rich Birch — That’s funny.

Daniel Simmons — They needed to be in the same room together.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Daniel Simmons — So I basically made a proposal. Let’s pull them together. And in our weekly meeting that I had with campus pastors, uh, especially our adult discipleship guy, he’s there every single week. He’s got at least about 15 minutes every week in that meeting to talk about whatever he wants to talk about. And if he needs more, he kind of gets preference. You get, ah you can take as much of my time as you want. If there’s something kind of going on, if there’s questions you need to ask, um, I think that that’s, I think that’s really, uh, that’s really critical.

Daniel Simmons — And then we’ve, we bring in our, uh, our central discipleship team leads frequently, and we’ll go down in the organization too.

Rich Birch — Okay. Yeah, love it.

Daniel Simmons — You don’t have to lead the team. Sometimes the best person to talk to for the campus pastors may not be the leader of it. Uh, it may be like, uh, a couple of people that are working on very specific things. So the person that’s working on the new membership process, or the new curriculum coming up in small groups. And ah ah that that really helps. So almost every single week in our meeting with the campus pastors, they they’re engaging with a central ministry head.

Daniel Simmons — And then I try to lead those men to think of themselves, you you are the pastors of the church. So we’ve got J.D. Greear, who’s the who’s the lead pastor of the church. He’s preaching the gospel. But you really are the hands and feet of that message. You’re the DNA carrier. And so I’ve really tried to task our campus pastors. When someone walks into this meeting, I want you to see yourself as the the shepherd that is in this room, the the the shepherd leader. So man, listen carefully, engage fully with them like a leader would, but also just remember like those those people, our central ministry heads are all on somebody’s campus. And so they’re all underneath your care.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Daniel Simmons — So love them, care about them, seek to understand. And I try to tell both sides always like could we coach our central leaders when you come in the campus master meeting, we we’re we’re kind of always coaching them. This is how you enter into that room and can succeed.

Rich Birch — That’s good. Yeah.

Rick Langston — It’s really good.

Daniel Simmons — And so when they do that, they actually live out core well and they help work with our campus pastors to live out pace well.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. When you, so the one of the things I love there is I’ve heard other um campus pastors actually kind of, it’s a sad statement. I once heard a guy say, you know, being a campus pastor, he was kind of dogging his own job. And he said, you know, being a campus pastor, it’s like, it’s like being a pastor with training wheels. Like they’re not really letting me lead.

Daniel Simmons — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Which is unfortunate. So how do you, kind of sticking with that, we you were talking there about empowering, particularly the campus powers pastors, how do you ensure that they’re in, they’re empowered with the right thing? So they feel like they’re actually leading and because they are actually leading.

Daniel Simmons — Right.

Rich Birch — What what are you doing to define the scope for them so that they are like, okay, I’m, I’ve got this ball and I’m running with it, Daniel. How how do you, how how do you do that for them?

Daniel Simmons — Yeah, I mean, you know, Brené Brown says “clear is kind”, right?

Rich Birch — Yes, yes.

Daniel Simmons — And so one of the things that we try to do is this, these are the areas that are kind of set in the church and they’re set because these are our, these are our, this is our values.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Daniel Simmons — Um, these are the things that unite us across the board, um, actually in core and pace underneath core with our central ministries, uh, C is collaborate. O, is our central teams own the the vision of the ministry across the church. And one of the ways they live that out is they set the common strategy. So what’s the strategy across our church uh be very clear about that.

Daniel Simmons — So when we do student ministry uh what differentiates student ministry at The Summit Church. What do we want to see to be true across all of our campuses in student ministry, so that if I walk into one campus and I and I participate in student ministry or serve in student ministry. And then I go to a different campus the next week, ah which I don’t want people doing that. But if they were, they would be like, man, this student ministry, I see it’s the same church. It’s the same student ministry.

Daniel Simmons — And so we want to define those as much as we can. And what I tell our central staff is make them very clear. Make them thorough enough so that we’re able to achieve what we want to achieve. But make but but limit them as much as you can. Make as few of them as you can.

Rich Birch — Right. Okay.

Daniel Simmons — So make them as thorough as we need to, but make them as few as you can and push everything else down to our campuses.

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

Daniel Simmons — And I think that those three things help us. Like clarity, um make them as thorough as we need to, to accomplish our mission, because that’s what we’re really here to do. But then also ah try to make them make the list as as as as short as you can ah so that you can push down leadership. When those three things happen, typically we’re giving at least enough autonomy for people to thrive.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s a really good insight because i there can be a tendency, I love our central teams, but there can be a tendency to be like, we’re just going to keep adding things to that list of stuff that’s important. And the problem is every time we add something to that list…

Daniel Simmons — Right.

Rich Birch — …by definition, it makes the other things less important.

Daniel Simmons — It does.

Rich Birch — And so it it becomes it becomes tricky to then, if I’m on a campus and I’m thinking about the whole different, all these different areas, that’s a lot of different balls to keep up in the air. I think that’s a really good insight. What what are the R and the E in core? What do they stand for?

Daniel Simmons — So the R is resource. And so that’s actually one of the main jobs when I ah when I’m either hiring a ah ah central person or i’m I’m helping to coach them, I tell them one of the one of the things that you’re going to do is you’re going to help um your campus counterparts become masters at that job.

Rich Birch — Love it

Daniel Simmons — You’re like you you don’t have to. I don’t want you to be a jack of all trades if you’re a central ministry lead. I want you to kind of become an expert…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Daniel Simmons — …and I want you to multiply that expertise out…

Rich Birch — Good.

Daniel Simmons — …because people on the campuses kind of do need to be a jack of all trades, right? Especially your campus pastor. But but if if you can train and coach and develop those people in those ministry areas, how do you be a how does a worship leader become ah a great worship leader? How does a student…

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Daniel Simmons — …pastor become a great student pastor. So that’s that’s R. And then the E stands for evaluate ministry effectiveness and strategic initiatives and processes. So I actually task our central ministries,

Rich Birch — Love it.

Daniel Simmons — I want everybody evaluating. Leaders evaluate all the time. But they need to be the ones that are initiating that evaluation. So if you travel to a campus, campuses understand ah when a central person shows up, they’re there to help you serve…

RicH birch — Love it.

Daniel Simmons — …but they’re also probably going to give you feedback on ministry execution. But I also tell them just as important, ah at least once to two times a year, you need to be pulling people together to evaluate are the things we’re doing effective.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Daniel Simmons — And a central person can’t know that by themselves. You have to ask the campus people ah and because they’re going to tell you, hey, on the ground, this is what’s happening.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. Just, and Rick, I want to get to you in a second with a question about leaders and finding leaders, but, and developing them, but just because we went through core, can you run through pace quick?

Daniel Simmons — Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rich Birch — And give give us that that that that acronym?

Rick Langston — I can’t wait to hear it myself. Come on.

Daniel Simmons — So ah P in pace is pastor and shepherd the congregation.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Daniel Simmons — I mean, the campus teams are the tip of the spear of the church. They’re the people that know and love and serve and disciple that congregation. A is that they are that they advance the mission and the vision of the church in their location.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Daniel Simmons — C is they collaborate because collaboration and communication needs to go both ways.

Rich Birch — Yep. Love it.

Daniel Simmons — And E is that they ah they execute our ministries with excellence and creativity.

Rich Birch — Love it. So good. That’s great. What a great, I love, that’s a great tool. A great framework for sure for people to be to be thinking about. Well, Rick, one of the things that it’s obviously clear that’s happening behind the scenes at The Summit is there’s somewhere you’re doing something to develop a pipeline of finding and sending leaders. Something is working in The Summit on this front. Not only, and we’ve been talking just about really the campuses within this kind of 30 minute radius, but that’s not even to say what you’re doing with church planting and other areas. What what does that pipeline look like? How how would you describe that? How how do you find good leaders, identify them, raise them up to the system? What’s that look like, Rick?

Rick Langston — Well, we’ve had some really great leaders that have helped us develop that pipeline and run it right now. Before I do, I want to tag on to that that that ah discussion that you guys just had. I think a lot of pastors need to recognize there’s difference between leading and controlling.

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.

Rick Langston — And we are, you know, some are called primarily to preach, but not everybody is called primarily to preach. But everybody’s called to make disciples and equip the saints if you’re called to to serve in a leadership role in the church.

Rick Langston — And so I think when you ask that question about that tension of like, I’m a pastor with training wheels, it’s because you don’t get to do every single thing you want to do. But you probably get to do the main thing you’re called to do…

Rich Birch — Right. That’s good.

…which is really the hardest work, which is making disciples and pastoring people.

Rich Birch — Yes. Ephesians 4, right? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

Rick Langston — And, um, exactly. It’s like we can find a lot of other things to do besides that…

Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah

Rick Langston — …and get kind of drawn to that.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Rick Langston — So just really kind of I think that multi-site and the whole structure that’s that that’s allowed us to create just force people to kind of focus in on like the main ah main thing.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Rick Langston — When it comes to developing leaders, as you just as you’re asking that question, I first of all, it’s the type of person that you want to get on board. I think this is, I heard this was a quote by Leonard Sweet and I heard it years ago, but it stuck with me that he’s he said the great divide within the church today is not, is between those who get it and those who don’t. It’s like, do they just get it? Do they get who we are and what we’re trying to do?

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Rick Langston — Or are they trying, or they or they don’t? And that’s a, that’s an intangible to a certain degree, but you spend a little bit of time with people and you start to recognize whether they get it or not, you know?

Rick Langston — So I think ah having an internal pipeline is like, number one, the best thing. We’re we’re fortunate as a church. We’re close to a seminary that a lot of people have come and gone through The Summit and been sent out as church planters or come on our staff. Kind of, you know, they were in the area. So we kind of got together. But we’re not not right next door to the seminary.

Rich Birch — Right.

Rick Langston — We are closer now as we’ve expanded. So ah we always said in the early days, we kind of got the ones that were willing to drive a half an hour to be a part of The Summit. So they they they liked us enough to be here.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s fun.

Rick Langston — But, down you know, having it some kind of internship, apprenticeship, residency um is is great. So like like Daniel mentioned, he was on staff with another ministry, but attending The Summit. So that being able to have people that be a part of you and and develop.

Rich Birch — Right.

Rick Langston — And that’s, we have a long history of that, but we definitely got to a place where that just doesn’t happen naturally. So developing some kind of residency where you’re getting people in early and allowing them, you know it gives us a chance to see and and the thing I think that’s been effective about residencies, people who want to, you know, we have a residency here where people raise support to work at the church. They get a very intentional training while they’re here. They get to actually have a position, um you know, on and a team somewhere and function part time or full time in those areas.

It doesn’t mean they’ll have a job when they finish the residency, but it does mean that we are we get sort of like the first pick…

Rich Birch — Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rick Langston — …at the end. We don’t have a job for everybody that comes through, but we’ve gotten to know them and they know who we are as a church. And we do hire outside and that’s, that’s, ah Daniel’s got some excellent processes for that. But like, what we look inside first, but when we go outside.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Rick Langston — It’s usually somebody that’s kind of familiar with The Summit.

Rich Birch — Right.

Rick Langston — And, you know, people have like, I’ve, we’ve had people that have moved here to get a job before they got the job. So, because they’re, you know…

Rich Birch — Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rick Langston — …they, they, from the outside had somehow gleaned enough about the church to like, I want to be in that area.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rick Langston — And so, um, it is, and it comes back down to that, like being able to, ah you that you believe in the vision, the mission of that, that church.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.

Rick Langston — And even, you know, have a, have, and that culture, um, it’s not a place to build your own kingdom. Even even for our church planters, you know, sometimes I would jokingly say, if you want to do it your way, maybe you’re a church planter. But think even or our healthy church planters don’t really have that, like, I just want to do it my way.

Rich Birch — Right, right, right, right.

Rick Langston — You know, they might have a and might have a unique, um a unique you know, kind of flavor to their their their vision, but we all got the same mission.

Rick Langston — So, you know, and that’s a little bit.

Rich Birch —Yeah, we were talking before we got on air and I’ve had some interaction with Mercy Hill the church that the regional kind of team was sent out from from The Summit. And there’s a lot of overlap there. Like there’s a lot of cultural overlap, obviously, between as and they’re obviously in a different part of the country, all that. But yeah, that’s that’s interesting. That’s cool.

Rick Langston — Yeah. I mean, they’re, they’re like an hour from us.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Rick Langston — They’re very close. I remember, so Andrew Hopper was a campus pastor here.

Rich Birch — Right.

Rick Langston — And I told him one time, you should be able to take like a hundred people. I don’t think he took a hundred, but they were probably close to 50.

Rich Birch — Right.

Rick Langston — A lot of young college graduates and stuff. And when they went and launched and got, they’ve, they, he learned a lot here and he and his, you know, since his executive pastor, Bobby, they,

Rich Birch — Yeah, they’re great people.

Rick Langston — they just whatever they learned here they’re doing better there, you know. It’s like they’re just killing it you know?

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. They’re they’re good guys good good good guys like that team for sure. Well, Daniel, as we kind of come down to land the plane here, when you kind of look up over the horizon, you know, as you continue to grow, multiply, launch more campuses, what are some of the things that you’re wondering about? Questions you’re you’re asking, you’re thinking about in the future, kind of what what’s the future for, ah you know, for The Summit from your vantage point when it comes to multi-site? What are you thinking about in the future?

Daniel Simmons — Yeah, I mean, I think honestly what I look out at, I look out at our city and I look at all the different places that don’t have a campus within about a 10 minute drive of most of the people that would call that place home. And my heart really goes to the lost people that are there. And my heart really goes to our people ah because I mean, I love the people at our church are amazing. And they’re sharing the gospel. They’re sharing their lives. They’re inviting people to church. And I want to I want to I want to help. I want to help knock down one more barrier to to to to ministry for those people.

Rich Birch — Good.

Daniel Simmons — And I want to put a campus in those areas. And I think that there’s, I mean, off the top of my head, I could probably think of five or six more campuses we could put in this area that would really help facilitate ministry…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Daniel Simmons — …and reach people with the gospel, bless the most broken parts of those cities. Because that’s kind of how we say it. Like we want to we want our campuses to bless. We don’t we can’t take on every problem, but at least three or four of the most broken, ah broken areas and that’s in that area, whatever it is, we want to bless that and and hopefully bring bring the light of Christ ah there.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Daniel Simmons — And so I see that. And then I see, you know you know, one of the challenges is as we grow, how do we scale this?

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Daniel Simmons — And I think that’s a challenge the leaders at The Summit Church have to face and think about and, you know, talk to other ah talk to other great churches out there that are that are living out the Great Commission and and have done it really wisely.

Rick Langston — Yeah.

Daniel Simmons — So I think those are two of the things that I think about a lot.

Rich Birch — That’s good. Now, am I picking up on, which I’d love to hear you unpack a little bit more, um you know, you when you think about campuses, you’re thinking about in the triangle, in RDU…

Daniel Simmons — Right. Right.

Rich Birch — …as opposed to church plants, which are outside. Explain that logic a little bit, because I think this is a nuance that I think people…

Daniel Simmons — Yes.

Rich Birch — …when you look in on multi-site, sometimes people don’t understand why you would why you would limit like that.

Daniel Simmons — Right.

Rich Birch — Explain that a little bit.

Daniel Simmons — So, i mean our our I mean, I’d probably tell somebody this too, kind of if I go back to the first question you asked…

Rich Birch — Sure.

Daniel Simmons — …like what does a multi-site look like at Summit?

Rich Birch — Yep.

Daniel Simmons — So our our kind of conviction is that we’re not going to plant a campus, um at least not something that will stay a campus for more than a few years outside of the Raleigh-Durham area. So if you live in some area and you would look to like Raleigh-Durham, maybe Chapel Hill as your city center, we are willing to plant a campus there. In fact, we want I’m not just willing, I want to plant a campus there.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Daniel Simmons — But we also plant churches in RDU. um there’s There’s some context ah that probably feel like a church might be better. And then also there’s just guys that that raise up, that…

Rich Birch — Right.

Daniel Simmons — …where God is leading them is to plant here. We’re not going to stand in the way of that.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Daniel Simmons — Outside of RDU, we are going to primarily plant churches or at least help somebody facilitate a ministry that will one day become a church. And so that’s that’s kind of our ministry philosophy. That’s how we do it.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I would agree. I think as a observer and practitioner multisite for years, I really do think for the vast majority of multisite churches, multisite is best understood as a regional strategy…

Daniel Simmons — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …as opposed to trans-regional or national.

Daniel Simmons — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Like we look at Life Church or Elevation, these other churches that have gone national. But they’re the rare exception

Daniel Simmons — Right.

Rich Birch — And that most churches can’t make that that jump. It’s that the the shorthand I’ve said in other contexts is like, I really think it’s good for reaching people who all cheer for the same sports teams. Like, who are all the people in, you know…

Rick Langston — Right, yeah.

Rich Birch — …and and that the the triangle RDU has a has a cultural milieu, I might be say that is kind of around there, but, but an hour and a half, two hours away, you know, it’s it’s a different, it’s a different world. Um, even when, when I was in New Jersey, you know, we’re North Jersey people, Manhattan facing suburbs are very different than South than South Jersey, you know, Philly- based suburbs.

Rick Langston — Yeah.

Daniel Simmons — Right.

Rich Birch — They cheer for different sports teams, different cultural, even though they’re in the same state.

Daniel Simmons — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Um, so I, I think that’s a good nuance that you guys are are drawing a line around. I think that’s great.

Daniel Simmons — Yeah. It also comes from a conviction that that we want to plant churches. We want to we want to grow leaders.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.

Daniel Simmons — Like we like In fact, on the campus pastor job description, the second thing that I hold them accountable for is I want you to raise up the next generation of Christian leaders.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Daniel Simmons — And a part of that means growing up another generation of pastors and church planters.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Daniel Simmons — And so I think also our focus with not planting campuses too far afield is that we understand that the greatest long-term impact for the the advancing God’s kingdom is probably not going to be advancing The Summit kingdom.

Rich Birch — Yeah, good.

Daniel Simmons — It’s going to be planting new churches. And so we want to do as much that as we can.

Rick Langston — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. That’s great. I think that’s a good distinction. Sorry, go ahead, Rick. I cut you off there.

Rick Langston — And they, well, they do, they do, you know, there’s a synergy between those, both of those things. And I just had a cool thing happen years ago where we had planted a church in Charlotte. So that’s two hours from here. Spence Shelton, Mercy Church in Charlotte. They were meeting a mobile location. I got a phone call at the office here from a church leader, you know a senior adult at ah at a church that was in, you know, and plateaued and declined in Charlotte. And He literally said, we want to be a campus of The Summit Church because they saw us online or something.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yep.

Rick Langston — I said, well, we don’t do campuses in Charlotte, but you should call Spence. And they got their first permanent facility that way.

Rich Birch — Love it. So good.

Rick Langston — And I and so there was a little bit of like, I kind of hated giving away a building because no one has ever given us a building.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Rick Langston — I mean, and so I always remind him of that.

Daniel Simmons — Yeah.

Rick Langston — You like this place? You remember who got it for you?

Rich Birch — Well, at least return your phone calls.

Rick Langston — Yes, he does that.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s that’s amazing. Well, this has been great. There’s a lot we could talk about. And you know there’s ah yeah we’ve really focused just on the multi-site side, but there’s a whole story here around what you’ve done in church planting as well, which I think is amazing.

Daniel Simmons — Right.

Rich Birch — Again, we’ve seen that statistically that churches that it get involved, deeply involved in multiplication through multi-site end up ah they have a higher likelihood to be church planting as well.

Daniel Simmons — Yeah. Yeah.

Rich Birch — That’s a common misnomer about multi multi-site that it’s actually, it’s somehow competing with church planting. That’s actually not true. um So ah but there’s a lot we could talk about maybe for another day.

Daniel Simmons — Yeah.

Rich Birch — But I I really appreciate you guys being on and being, and and just want to, you know, just publicly honor your leadership for what you’re doing at The Summit. You’re leading the way, excited to see what happens in the future. Rick, as we close today’s conversation, if people want to track with the church, where do we want to send them online?

Rick Langston — summitchurch.com and there’s also J.D. Greear’s ministry at jdgreear.com. You can follow what he’s you know his teaching ministry and the resources that he he’s got out there. We have a church planting collaborative called Summit Collaborative. I think that’s dot org. It’s churches that we we network with. And but we also I mean we’re happy to resource churches um the best we can.

Rick Langston — Because I mean, Rich, I have been aware of you for many years. And I love that you know there’s guys like you that are putting out resources available to all, but, you know, whether it’s, um, we’ve learned, we’ve, we’ve learned from other churches and, uh, we want to be, uh, generous stewards of what God’s done for us too.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Daniel Simmons — Yeah, there might also, can I throw in one thing with that?

Rich Birch — Absolutely. Of course. Yeah.

Daniel Simmons — Is it ah is that all those things are exactly right. And then Rick mentioned earlier in the podcast something called The Summit Institute, which is where we ah we we very we focus on people that are thinking and praying about going into full-time ministry.

Rick Langston — Yes.

Daniel Simmons — They do raise support for about two years, but it’s probably, I would put it up against any organization a leadership development program for young people who want to go into into full-time ministry across the country.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Daniel Simmons — We’ve got we’ve got an amazing seminary, Southeastern Seminary, right here in our backyard. So a lot of kids, what they do, I say kids, young people, what they do is they go to seminary, they get into this program, they get the best of what a seminary has to offer, and then they get incredible development and hands-on experience. So if you are out there and you’re listening to us and you’re thinking about that, we’d love to have you.

Rich Birch — Love it. Well, thanks so much, gentlemen. I appreciate you being here today.

Daniel Simmons — Yeah, thank you.

Rich Birch — Thank you for taking time ah to be with us. What ah what an honor. And it’s a great it’s been great to have you. Thanks so much.

Daniel Simmons — Yeah, thank you.