Thanks for joining us at the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Jared Kirkwood, the Executive Pastor of Ministries and Lead Pastor at the Irvine location of Mariners Church in California.

A church’s mission isn’t much without a strategy. How are you aligning, training, and equipping people at your church to take their next steps to move the mission forward? Tune in as Jared unpacks Mariners’ “transformational loop”—a four-part discipleship strategy through which they align all ministries and campuses to increase the church’s impact.

A mission and strategy // The transformational loop, Mariners’ strategy for achieving their mission, is pivotal to discipleship at the church. The transformational loop has four parts, each with their own ministries, programs, events, and teams. The parts of the loop are Follow Jesus (weekend experiences), Grow Together (life groups, care and recovery, and discipleship courses), Serve One Another (volunteer ministry teams), and Change the World (local and global outreach ministries).
Have a map for the strategy// Mariners wants to disciple people through a “map” rather than a “menu.” By acting as “tour guides” and getting to know people, the team can pastor people through a process, inviting them to join in groups or teams within the church. Identify how your church’s initiatives are connected to your mission and fit into your strategy.
A year’s worth of planning // Everything Mariners Church does aligns with the mission and connects with the transformational loop. For example, the Senior Pastor maps out the teaching series and key scriptures about a year in advance. The team then uses the teaching to create cohesive planning and alignment for events or programs. By harnessing energy from and building upon the teaching, they create greater momentum to move the mission forward.
Three tiers of events // Once they see the teaching calendar for the upcoming year, Jared and his leadership team can identify more easily what to say yes to and what to say no to. Their ministry roadmap has three tiers. Tier A are all-church events and are put on the calendar first. An example of Tier A is Rooted. Tier B are all-church but are contextualized at different congregations. These include life groups or deep dive discipleship courses that are open to everyone. Tier C are congregation-specific events and require approval from central ministry leaders to ensure alignment with the church’s overall strategy and effective use of resources.
Evaluate programs // Evaluate your ministry programs and events as often as you feel necessary. Jared and his team use a framework that categorizes initiatives into four quadrants. The bottom left of the quadrant are the things that are Weeds and need to be pulled. The upper left are Problem Trees, things that have potential but aren’t performing well. The upper right are Flourishing Trees, the high potential and high performance items that are feeding the whole garden. Finally, the bottom right are high performance but low potential. These are Nice Plants that you don’t want to get rid of though they aren’t nourishing to the entire church.
Address Weeds and Problem Trees // Weeds drain resources from the church, are outside of your strategy, and need to be removed. However, there will still be people who love them. As a leader it’s your job to help people see a more beautiful future and move them there. Similarly, Problem Trees need to be addressed so they can be made more fruitful. Identify what’s not working and take steps to help them become Flourishing Trees.

Visit marinerschurch.org and explore their social channels to see everything they are up to. Plus listen to this podcast episode with Erin Kerr to get the scoop on Rooted.

EXTRA CREDIT // Cultivate a Thriving Ministry with the Ministry Program Evaluation Toolkit

In this week’s episode, we unpack practical strategies for refining your ministry programs to maximize impact and align with your church’s mission. But what if you had a hands-on tool to guide this process? Enter the Ministry Program Evaluation Toolkit: A Garden-Inspired Framework to Assess and Refine Your Ministry Programs—your ultimate resource for evaluating, nurturing, and realigning your church’s efforts.

This toolkit uses the garden metaphor to help you categorize your programs as Weeds, Problem Trees, Flourishing Trees, or Nice Plants. From identifying programs to phase out, to cultivating the ones that are thriving, this resource provides clear steps and worksheets to help you confidently lead.

Take what you learned from this episode to the next level by accessing the Ministry Program Evaluation Toolkit as part of unSeminary Extra Credit. Start transforming your ministry programs today by downloading it here. Don’t miss this chance to create a thriving ministry strategy!

Thank You for Tuning In!

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Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Risepointe

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

Well, the team over at Risepointe has been there. As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead your church to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Licensed all over North America, their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to help move YOUR mission forward.

Check them out at Risepointe.com/unseminary and while you’re there get their FREE resource “10 Things to Get Right Before You Build”.

Episode Transcript

Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Really excited for today’s conversation. Been looking forward to it for quite a while. Excited to have Jared Kirkwood with us. He’s a part of Mariners Church. If you’re not familiar with Mariners, they have seven locations in California, if I’m counting correctly, and they’re on the brink of launching a couple more, plus an online community. They’re one of the fastest growing churches in the country for the last number of years. Jared is the lead pastor of Mariners Irvine and the discipleship pastors…he…or pastor. He is has been at Mariners Church for 16 plus years, has served as the junior high and high school pastor, lead pastor for the Rooted Network and as a teaching pastor. Jared, welcome. So glad you’re here.

Jared Kirkwood — Hey, thank you so much for having me, Rich. I really appreciate it. Your podcast has been such a benefit to so many of us and your insights even helping us in the last couple of years has been so beneficial to us as well. So thank you.

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s, that’s awfully kind of you to say. I I love Mariners. This is one of those churches—and don’t say this about a lot of church—if I lived in your backyard, I’d be going to your church. And so I just, I just think the world of what you guys do. And, um, you know, you have huge influence as a church, you know, the Rooted Network that come came out of, out of here. We’ve, we’ve talked about Rooted in the past. We’ve you know had multiple conversations, uh, with you guys and just honored that you’d be here today. So why don’t you fill out the picture, tell us a little bit more for folks that don’t know about Mariners, maybe give a bit of sense of that, and then tell us a little bit about your role.

Jared Kirkwood — So I’ve been at Mariners since I was a college student. I had given my life to Jesus as a senior in high school. I moved out to Southern California to go to Vanguard University. And within just a couple of short months, I started attending this mega church. And I thought, I have no idea who this Jesus guy really is. I better get plugged in somewhere fast so I can learn more. I had this interesting experience of sitting in Old Testament Survey hearing the story of Moses for the first time in my life, you know?

Rich Birch — Oh wow.

Jared Kirkwood — I’m like this is ah ah a wild, like paradigm shift. I had no clue what I was really doing with my life, and yet…

Rich Birch — That’s amazing.

Jared Kirkwood — …my time at Vanguard and being here at at Mariners Church was so pivotal and foundational to to really the trajectory of the rest of, not only my life, but of course, eternity because of of Jesus. And so i I started volunteering pretty quickly. I served in our our junior high ministry as a life group leader for a couple of years. And then just before I graduated, I joined our staff. So this is 2005. I did about 11 years in our youth ministry, did about every job you can do in that world and and loved every minute of it, of course.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Jared Kirkwood — But then as a lot of you know a lot of times happens to us guys, as we get to that point where we think, okay, what’s next? What else is out there? And I found myself in a place where I actually left the church for a short period of time. And then came back because I missed it, craved it, my family was so connected here, and never stopped attending the church. And that’s when the Rooted Network came into the picture.

Jared Kirkwood — Got to spend a couple of years training churches on how to run Rooted, which was beautiful and exciting. And then ah during that time is when we went through that senior pastor transition. So from Kenton Beshore, who was here for 35 years, ah we moved to Eric Geiger. And it was ah an incredible transition. Those two guys, I think, led a master class of what senior pastors succession looks like.

Rich Birch — Yeah, for sure. For sure.

Jared Kirkwood — It’s amazing. They’re they’re still friends. They still gather together regularly. Kenton still goes on trips with us. He still teaches occasionally in our church. I mean, it’s amazing. It’s so so beautiful. And then Eric has been able over the last seven years to really make the church his. It’s been a beautiful thing to not only witness, but to be so close to him in that process.

Jared Kirkwood — So Eric asked me to move into the discipleship pastor role, which then within two years of that became the lead pastor for our Irvine campus, which is uniquely the broadcast and kind of primary of our our seven campuses. In fact, back then it wasn’t seven, it was maybe two or three actually. And I have the uniqueness of serving as the lead pastor for the campus in which he is the teaching pastor at. So, you know, there’s some fun things there that we have had to figure out.

Rich Birch — Yeah, there’s a lot we could talk about.

Jared Kirkwood — Yes, yeah that’s that’s true.

Rich Birch — Yeah, definitely.

Jared Kirkwood — Happy to go wherever you’d like to go. But then in this last year moved into more of a central model. And so I am our lead pastor for Irvine, as well as now the executive pastor of ministries for all of our our campuses.

Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Yeah, there’s a ton that we can unpack there. And, you know, there’s a lot there that, you know, there’s so much that Mariners does at such a high level of of excellence. And I think there’ll be a lot that we can draw out. And I’m sure we’d love to have you on in the future. There’s others, so we won’t get to all of it today. But but let’s start with this whole idea around like keeping those seven and growing more. My understanding is obviously you guys, I feel like every time I turn around, there’s like, an oh, we’re launching a new congregation, which is wonderful. I love that. Um, you know, keeping those various locations aligned. How, what, how do you guys think about that internally? What, what are you kind of processes, internal structures are you using to ensure that, Hey, we’re kind of all heading in the same direction?

Jared Kirkwood — Yeah, so as every church should, we have a mission that is directly connected to the Great Commission, right? So we wanna inspire people to follow Jesus and fearlessly change the world. That’s what we are setting out to do here. And that mission is not much without a strategy. So the way in which we help people to actually inspire, you know to to be inspired to follow Jesus and then change the world around them is through what we call the transformational loop.

Jared Kirkwood — It is four stops. Each of them have their own ministries, programs, events, teams, and et cetera. Those four stops are Follow Jesus. That’s our weekend experience. Grow Together is rooted in life groups, care and recovery, some of our discipleship courses. Then we have Serve One Another. Those are our volunteer ministry teams for the church. And then Change the World are our outreach initiatives that’s local and global.

Jared Kirkwood — So for us, the way we train our pastors, the way they equip our volunteers, the whole goal is that we would pastor people through a process, through a strategy, rather than being a program manager.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Jared Kirkwood — The last thing I want my staff to do is spend their time just managing programs…

Rich Birch — Right.

Jared Kirkwood — …just thinking about the next great event they’re going to do. But instead, we really want to disciple people. We want to be that unique story of a church that can grow numerically, but also deepen as well. That’s easier said than done, but that’s kind of like we spend most of our time thinking about how do we…

Rich Birch — Right.

Jared Kirkwood — …just continue to know the amount of people that show up to our church and help them get connected to one another. And the transformational loop, our strategy, is pivotal to that. We must hold onto that. We really don’t do very much outside of it. And anything we do really takes me to have to say yes to it.

Rich Birch — Right. Okay, good. And I love that idea that I want to underline something you said there, this idea of leading your team, your pastors to be really pastoring, leading people through a process rather than a program manager. That I think is such a key insight because we can get stuck on running our individual boxes. We run these like, well, I run this program. I’m the groups person. I’m the whatever ah person. I run junior high and I get…

Rich Birch — And this is particularly as churches get very large, this becomes a bigger problem because it’s like I can grow my own kingdom and not think about anybody else and how it all fits together. How are you ensuring that you’re really trying to drive people and drive your teams and your even your programs to think about there are the elements or environments, whatever we call those things, to to move people along in that process? What’s that look like?

Jared Kirkwood — Right, so a couple things come to mind. We have a weekly team meeting with my direct reports. Our staff is all, we could talk about organizational structure if you’d like to, but everybody that’s on my team is a ministry leader for Irvine and is the strategy leader for our whole ministry area for the church. And so anytime we gather, we’re talking about whatever ministry, the program, the event they’re going to do, and how that’s connected to our strategy. Because if it’s connected to the strategy, we believe that it is, by default, it’s going to disciple people.

Jared Kirkwood — We want to be a church that is about having a map rather than a menu. And the irony behind that phrase is that, honestly, when I started 20, almost 20 years ago, we actually had printed menus. There was like, got you know…

Rich Birch — I love it. Yes.

Jared Kirkwood — …four pamphlets, you know, you open it up four fold pamphlets where you could see…

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. 112 ministries. Yes.

Jared Kirkwood — …all the things, yeah.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Jared Kirkwood — And guess what? we We kind of felt like that was the right thing to do back then.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jared Kirkwood — What we’ve realized now is it it kind of turned our team into travel agents where you’d meet somebody on the lobby or the patio and you’d say, you know, you get to know them and then you open up the map and you just help them go, this is where I think you should go. And then you just send them off on their way. As opposed to who we want to be, which is tour guides.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Jared Kirkwood — We want to get to know people. We want to invite them, hey, come and do Rooted with me, come and be a part of this this team that I’m leading, come serve with us, right?

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Jared Kirkwood — So join us in what we’re doing as opposed to, hey, there’s this thing over there, go and do that.

Jared Kirkwood — So when I have my team meetings, that’s a large part of our conversation is just going, let’s go back to the loop. Let’s go back to that map mentality. Let’s try to treat ourselves as as these tour guides who are inviting people to join us in this great adventure of discipleship and becoming more like Jesus. It has to start with us, otherwise we’re just in-house consultants and that’s really not at all who we want to be.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I love that. I think that’s a that’s a great clarity. The other thing I want to underline, which we can come back to later, but I like that that as a church, you have clarified, hey, our Irvine campus is not only leading here in Irvine, but they’re also, you know, strategy leaders for our individual areas across the entire church.

Rich Birch — When there’s fuzziness around that in multi-site churches, this is one of the areas where it goes sideways, because it’s like, who who are we actually supposed to be looking at? Who is the person that’s actually making these decisions? Or or who is, you know who which is the area that we think is doing a great job? And if we’re not clear on that, then just whoever’s the loudest ends up getting the the voice on that.

Jared Kirkwood — It’s so true.

Rich Birch — And that’s not necessarily what we’re, what that that that doesn’t provide the kind of alignment that we’re looking for. So I love that you’ve provided that kind of clarity.

Rich Birch — Let’s kind of focus in specifically as you’re building out that map, talk me through what that looks like from maybe like a teaching perspective, weekend teaching? How does that rad radiate out into impacting, you know, Eric’s obviously a ah compelling communicator, one of the best communicators in the country, maybe the world, and, you know, a high teaching environment value on teaching as an external someone that appears to be what’s there.

Rich Birch — And you know so many times I’ve coached churches through, man, we’ve got to focus on that part. That part of what we do is so critical to who we are. It’s not secondary. You’ve got to spend extra time focusing on that. But how does that how does that impact your planning process? What’s that look like?

Jared Kirkwood — So we’re very fortunate in that Eric is incredibly planful. He is way out in the future and he provides for us about at any given time, we were going to be about a year in advance of knowing kind of what the teaching calendar is going to look like.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Jared Kirkwood — We know the series by title. We know…

Rich Birch — Okay. Wait a second. Time out, time out. So you a year out, talk to me when you say a year out, cause I hear people say that and I’m like, well, they’re they’re what they’re saying is we’re still talking about Jesus a year from now, obviously. But what kind of level of detail is he a year out? What’s that look like?

Jared Kirkwood — So we’re prepping for Christmas right now, but I could tell you the scripture for each week of the Christmas series in 2025.

Rich Birch — Wow. Okay. Yeah.

Jared Kirkwood — So when I say a year out, I really do mean that we are…

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

Jared Kirkwood — …so far in advance that we have the sermon briefs. It’s not every bullet point…

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Jared Kirkwood — …but it’s the key scripture and the primary idea behind that passage.

Rich Birch — That’s great.

Jared Kirkwood — We can see how that series is gonna link together. And then the real fun part of the work is aligning the this beautiful scripturally-based you know, series that Eric comes back with, with the momentum of the calendar and really try to sync those two things up.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Jared Kirkwood — Here’s the strategy and here’s the teaching calendar. And Eric is like the chief proponent of having a strategy. Like he’s all about the transformational loop. And so he never shows up with an element of the teaching calendar that’s going to be in conflict with our strategy.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Jared Kirkwood — Instead, what he does is says, here’s the teaching calendar. Let’s do, I’ve done everything I can to match up the the momentum of the year. Now match the ministry events and programs and any kind of extra stuff we’re going to do, harness the energy that’s going to come from this annualized plan that we have put together that is both teaching content but also ministry strategy. So we’re lining all of those things up and then my responsibility really is to take his plan, turn to my team, and do the hard work of figuring out what do we say yes to, what do we say no to.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Jared Kirkwood — If we say yes to something that is not particularly inside of our strategy, our transformational loop—this might be like ah an event that’s gonna draw people from the church. The ownership on that event is to funnel people to join us on this weekend. So ideally we time those events right before the kickoff of a new series so we can invite them to that because if we know they come to the new series, the the message is gonna be so powerful and compelling. They’re gonna want more of that that hopefully they’ll stay with us for the duration of that series.

Jared Kirkwood — So then one second example would be that if we have something that is in the teaching um the teaching calendar that is going to cause someone to go, oh, and I want to know more about that. Well, then I go back to my team and say, what do we have or what can we create to create a special environment where somebody can go deeper on that concept, whether that’s ah ah a theological course that we’ve written, or maybe it’s something in our care and recovery ministry where we can help process through anxiety or depression or whatever the theme of that that message became.

Rich Birch — Love that. And you know, for friends that know anything about Rooted, ah you’re getting a bit of the peak behind the scenes. You, I know churches that have really implemented Rooted well, they have taken on that kind of rhythm within their church where you see like it it becomes this like crescendo of the season, right? It’s like we kind of end up, man, there’s like a a real momentum that builds through those weeks. You can see how that just makes sense that that’s how you’re approaching ah kind of the calendar and your planning in general at the church.

Jared Kirkwood — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Talk me through um how you coordinate between things that are like, they impact everybody, that you know but then there’s maybe stuff. How do you allow for local congregation level or campus level stuff? How does all that fit together? What what what are you doing on that front to ensure that there’s alignment? Because that sounds good in one location. You multiply it by seven or by a couple more, it just becomes exponentially more difficult to do.

Jared Kirkwood — All right, so this is a podcast with a bunch of like executive pastors, discipleship pastors.

Rich Birch — Yes. Love it.

Jared Kirkwood — This is the best like talking shop we can do right here, right?

Rich Birch — Yeah. A hundred percent. A hundred percent.

Jared Kirkwood — Like this is getting into the the tactics…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jared Kirkwood — …of of really doing ministry road mapping, right? So we get in, in July, we get a first preview of what the teaching calendar is going to look like. I sit down with my close team, my leadership team, and we start to place what we call our Tier A events.

Jared Kirkwood — Our roadmap roughly has three tiers, A, B, and C. A is defined as all church. Rooted is like the classic example. We know when we’re going to do Rooted. We know how it’s going to happen.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jared Kirkwood — We know when the trainings are going to take place. We put the the launch of Rooted, the celebration, we put it on the calendar before anything else.

Jared Kirkwood — So now and and and Eric knows when those weekends are going to be. In fact, I give it to him before study break. Here’s when it’s gonna happen so then he can shape the start of a new series to invite people into Rooted. Just like you said, Rich, it’s like it’s so hand in glove for us. We hardly have to think about that.

Jared Kirkwood — But there are a bunch of other things that we do have to think about. So then we have these Tier B events. These are the things that we still say are all church, but they’re going to be contextualized at one of our other congregations.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Jared Kirkwood — A good example of this would be after Rooted, we have when somebody’s in a life group, we have ah kind of a suite of discipleship courses called Deep Dive. And these are things around the story of God, the the big picture of Scripture. this you know it’s um it’s theology and the mission of God, which is essentially a way to talk about systematic theology.

Jared Kirkwood — We want our congregations, every one of them, to provide and offer those courses throughout the year. We have the best practice of when they should happen. We tell the congregations this is when you’re going to do them. They figure out how. The method is on them to make that thing happen.

Rich Birch — Okay. Okay.

Jared Kirkwood — It might be through life groups, it might be live teaching, so on and so forth.

Jared Kirkwood — And then we have Tier C events. These are our congregation-specific events that are things that we, as the central ministry leaders, we’re going to provide as options. We’re going to approve them before they make the calendar, meaning we’re going to agree that that is in line with our strategy and a good use of their time. And a momentum marker that has a clear next step back into the loop.

Jared Kirkwood — So there’s an approval process for that. It’s not as nitty gritty as it sounds. It’s actually quite fun. Because we get to talk about the beauty of the uniqueness of our congregation. It’s very different when you talk about Irvine to Santa Ana. You know, Santa Ana is the highest, you know, population of Hispanic families in in Orange County, or California. So the ministry opportunities we have there are a little different than we have in Irvine, you know.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jared Kirkwood — So we get to talk about the uniqueness of the cities that we serve and create some events or programs that might be really beautiful and beneficial to the uniqueness of the cities in which our congregations are in.

Jared Kirkwood — So that all comes together, but the reality is A happens first, B kind of happens with A and it’s directed, the C is where all of the rubber meets the road. It’s dirty, like roll your sleeves up.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jared Kirkwood — Because it’s like, it’s complicated. Everybody wants to do their, their favorite thing.

Rich Birch — Right. Yeah.

Jared Kirkwood — And I have to be the guy to say, I don’t know that that’s the wisest thing for us to do. That’s not the most strategic or you try to find great ways to package that.

Rich Birch — So give us a sense of, so two two questions. One, ah kind of package together. You can take them whichever way you want to go. First, that process, so I used to get cut get it come back in in July, we got the teaching calendar, then we start kind of laying out what is the timeline that to which you would say, okay, we’ve kind of got, we feel like we’ve got the year nailed down at a fairly detailed level?

Rich Birch — And then number two, connected to that, those C-level things, um are those can those be ad hoc? Can they happen throughout the entire year? And you know how do you how do you deal with stuff that just comes up? Because in a campus that’s trying to be maybe a bit bit more opportunistic or saying, hey, I see an opportunity to jump on, does that fit into the planning process? What’s that look like?

Jared Kirkwood — Yeah, so the the quick picture of the calendar, Eric comes back in July. Throughout the month of August is when we are really, um when I say come back, by the way, he he takes a few weeks of a study break where this this is where…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Jared Kirkwood — …he he’s dedicating time. He’s not teaching on the weekend services. We rarely see him, but he comes back with a full year of sermon briefs. So we know he’s working.

Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.

Jared Kirkwood — But when he comes back in August, this is where we’re trying to then um really place those on the calendar. We’re lining up, if Eric’s not teaching who’s going to do that.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.

Jared Kirkwood — And then by September, really my team is deeply involved.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jared Kirkwood — So in the September timeframe is when we are committed before the month ends, we’re going to have the the calendar year completed for the following year. So just at the end of this September, we finished 2025.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Jared Kirkwood — Now then what my leadership team does is once a quarter, we look at the following quarter, and then the quarter after that.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Jared Kirkwood — So um October 1st is the start of our second quarter of the year for us. We’re going to look at, hey, what do we need to know for this upcoming quarter? Let’s get excited about it. But then let’s really spend some time on January through March and really make sure we agree with that plan we set out to do. Do we need to move anything, adjust? Do we need, you know, because sometimes things change and that’s totally fine. We don’t want to be bound to the thing that we put together, but we do want to trust that when we built it, it was a good idea.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Jared Kirkwood — Like there was a reason we put it there. Let’s talk about that stuff.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jared Kirkwood — So I do that every quarter. We’re getting about six months out into the future.

Rich Birch — That’s good. Okay, that makes total, total sense. That’s good. Sorry. Keep going. Yep.

Jared Kirkwood — So then. So. No, it’s all good. You you asked that question, though, about, OK, what happens, though, in that those those C events…

Rich Birch — Something happens. Yeah. Curveball.

Jared Kirkwood — …or or some of these other things. So we are allowed to break our rules any time. Right. I just know that I know that um there’s a great quote. I can’t remember who said it, but leadership is what you allow. Oftentimes, we we sort of think leadership is the the collection of great decisions that I make, and the plans that I put out there. Yes, that that is true. But more often than not, the results of your leadership is what you allowed to happen.

Rich Birch — That’s so good.

Jared Kirkwood — So the more things you say yes to when it really is outside of that plan, you know it’s coming at a cost. You’re going to have to say no to something else.

Jared Kirkwood — So then the other thing that we do is we will evaluate, as often as we feel necessary, we will evaluate our ministry programs and events. And we have a simple framework for this. It actually comes from um a business model from the the late 1970s, but we kind of adapted it to um a ministry context. It’s four quadrants. It’s kind of a bell curve. And as you know, with any any business leader, you’re thinking about how do I find that that the right at the tip of the top of that bell curve, not waiting too long, but I want to insight growth as fast as I can or at the strategic right time. So the the framework, if you can imagine a quadrant bottom left, it’s a, it’s kind of a gardening metaphor, which by the way, I love because I just, I that picture is so biblical, so beautiful…

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.

Jared Kirkwood — …um and it’s easy for us pastors to kind of hang onto it, right? So the bottom left are the things that are nice, I’m sorry, that are that are weeds. They’re just, they’re they’re pulling nutrients for the rest of the garden. You gotta have a hard conversation about pulling those things.

Jared Kirkwood — Above those means it has potential, but it’s not really performing well. Those are gonna be problem trees.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Jared Kirkwood — We need to have honest conversations about replanting those problem trees.

Jared Kirkwood — Then you move over to the right, high potential, high performance, these are your flourishing trees. Those are the ones that you do everything you can to feed those, give it as much nutrients as possible because it is feeding the whole garden. And then below that one, which is high performance, but low potential, these are the things that we call nice plants.

Jared Kirkwood — And honestly, there are a lot of our Tier C events. These are good things…

Rich Birch — Right.

Jared Kirkwood — …that we don’t want to get rid of, but we are not going to fuel and fund and resource and build new teams. We’re not going to over market and promote those things because they’re nice to have, but they’re not nourishing to the entirety of the church.

Jared Kirkwood — Rooted, sorry to keep going back to it. Not only is that our pinnacle Tier A event, it is our our model example of a flourishing tree because of Rooted, it it launches new life groups, people um understand their their purpose in life. They start to jump into ministry teams. They start to give for the first time. They understand beautiful concepts around um sin and repentance and God’s grace in their life. People give their life to Jesus. It is truly nourishing for everything in our church. It extends into every ministry of our church. So we’re going to fuel that with everything we have.

Jared Kirkwood — Now to the left of that, again, those are the things that we have to find a way those those um those problem trees, which means they have the potential to feed the whole garden. And yet for some reason, something’s not working.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jared Kirkwood — These are my favorite conversations, because what we get to do is go. Oh, I love the potential with just a little bit of reworking, re-tweaking, maybe it needs a new leader or it needs ah a new initiative, a new level of of prioritization within our decision making. Then we know that that thing as well can become a flourishing tree.

Jared Kirkwood — So that kind of helps maybe a ah framework understand…

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I like that.

Jared Kirkwood — …around how we make decisions, how we place certain things, how we prioritize things within our church calendar as well.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Can you give me an example? It can be theoretical, but like, is it, is it possible for problem trees to be trending in the wrong direction and be like, okay, this is like, it’s a problem tree becoming something that we want to pull. What would be an example of that? And is it, can you turn it, you know, have you, have you been able to see like, Hey, what does that replant look like functionally? Like what does that actually look like to ensure that we can try to push that towards flourishing rather than just having a kind of atrophy into like a weed that we want to pull out?

Jared Kirkwood — Yeah. So I’ll give you the real time example that we’re doing right now.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Jared Kirkwood — We have noticed that while Rooted is a flourishing tree, Rooted generates life groups and candidly our life groups have become problem trees. They should, they have the same level of potential as Rooted does. Because if you’re in a life group, you should be hearing regularly about serving and generosity and repentance and and all these other great things, those seven rhythms of Rooted are carried into our life groups as well.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Jared Kirkwood — But why are we not seeing the same fruit from life groups as we do in Rooted? Why is it at our church that you could walk around here, you could attend a weekend service and be so utterly convinced that Rooted is incredible and yet not really ever hear about life groups? That’s kind of a problem.

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.

Jared Kirkwood — So now a little a little bit of an interesting thing is that rarely do you see a problem tree become a weed. And the reason is with something is a pro… if something is a tree, it has the potential to feed the whole garden.

Rich Birch — Okay, okay.

Jared Kirkwood — If it’s truly a weed, it is taking a life from the garden. It is sucking nutrients, right?

Rich Birch — Okay, and okay. Right. Right.

Jared Kirkwood — And we got rid of most of those things. There’s still some lingering stuff. But what that looks like is that thing that’s like, we always do this. So I guess we’re just going to keep doing this. And it lives on the calendar. Somebody’s like, you see it move from one person to the next. Who wants this thing? I don’t really want to do this anymore. Then you got to send an all staff email. Hey, who wants to oversee this thing now? Those are those are your weeds. You got to pull those things.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jared Kirkwood — When nobody wants it, it’s probably a weed.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Jared Kirkwood — So the problem trees for us, life life groups has become that for us. And so what did I do? Just this week, well over the last couple of weeks. We promoted a new person onto my leadership team. I moved four people underneath them. I had a series of strategic meetings with them to talk about what would it take for life groups to become, to perform at the level of and of ah of a flourishing tree again. We identified those things. I took it to the ah senior leadership team with Eric as well. Looked at, looked at all of them and said, this is what we want to do. Everyone was like, absolutely. How can we help? Now we have our plan and our runway for over the next probably six months to really move that thing from high potential to equally as high of a performer.

Rich Birch — Yeah that’s good.

Jared Kirkwood — So it’s, it’s as fast as we can do it. You know, as soon as we assessed it, it only took us a couple of weeks to restructure and to find a new plan in order to really get us out of that, that problem tree category.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Well, and you can see, friends, that as you’re listening in, that even just having a a relatively simple framework, man, can be a powerful tool as we’re looking at the various aspects of what we’re doing. And there are a lot of churches that, um you know, we I used to joke, like when I started in ministry, that I I worked in… there were there were churches that bragged about the like, we’ve got 112 ministries. That was like, so that was a common way to to talk about church. And we realize, um you know, through wisdom of people like Eric who wrote “Simple Church” that like, Hey, this just doesn’t work. Like we can’t, we can’t do all of those things and we’re off task and we end up just creating fiefdoms and all that stuff. But having, having the guts to say, okay, let’s actually try to categorize what we’re doing, get some clarity on performance potential um and then start moving forward. That’s that’s that’s fantastic.

Rich Birch — When you say um you know you feel like you’ve been able to eliminate all the weeds as an organization, that’s great. Maybe reflect back on that season. What was it, were there any telltale signs that as you looked across or as you’ve looked across maybe in other churches, they’re like, hey, this is the kind of thing, what you said there about like, oh, you’ve got to pass it around. That’s a good one. The like, hey, we got to give it extra energy beyond what it’s producing. That’s a good one. Any other kind of telltale signs of of weeds that we see in our organizations?

Jared Kirkwood — Yeah, they’re usually things that are outside of your strategy.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Jared Kirkwood — They’re things that are legacy, those sort of golden calves that are still walking around.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Jared Kirkwood — They they tend to be things that it was handed off from one person to the next. Like it started as a great idea and then that person left or no longer wanted to do it and then the next person had to do it. It’s that thing where you keep seeing flyers and you go, wait, we still do that?

Rich Birch — Right. Yes. That’s good.

Jared Kirkwood — You know, it’s like those those little things where you know you You walk in the men’s restroom and you’re like, wait, that we’re still promoting this thing? You know, whatever it is.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.

Jared Kirkwood — It’s it’s a bunch of little things where if you’ve forgotten about it, it’s probably a weed.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. That’s good.

Jared Kirkwood — And then you have the hard work of honoring the people who love it, because there are always people who love whatever that thing is.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jared Kirkwood — There’s going to be a contingency of people who that is their thing. And so change management requires of us to listen and understand, but then help them see that there’s a more beautiful future down the road and you’re gonna help them get there. There’s another thing, there’s something that’s more in line with our strategy or more updated with where we’re going of which you can see and they can’t. So it’s our responsibility to acknowledge that it’s painful for them…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Jared Kirkwood — …to experience that a little bit with them and then bring them somewhere.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jared Kirkwood — You don’t just cancel it and be the guy that sends the email and it’s just over. You gotta walk people with it.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jared Kirkwood — And then one last thing I’ll say with this, with this Rich, because I I do think that this is a way for, for maybe those of us who have some staff teams that are excited about creating new things and they want to generate a bunch of new events and programs and ministries and all of that. My audit on when somebody is starting to generate and create new things, I tend to stop and ask them, Hey, can you tell me a couple stories about what’s happening in your ministry from your experience?

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Jared Kirkwood — So just check them a little bit and say, what’s going on in our kids’ ministry? Tell me about a new family that just showed up. Or tell me about the the Rooted group that you just led. Or tell me something that is kind of showing me that you are shepherding the people of our church. You’re not just leading them and making decisions independent on your own.

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

Jared Kirkwood — Does that make sense?

Rich Birch — Totally, for sure.

Jared Kirkwood — It’s like this it’s like if if you’re doing the work of ministry, there’s so much time that we can spend just caring for people, discipling the individual.

Rich Birch — Yep, yep, yep.

Jared Kirkwood — That that really can take a lot of time, as it should…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Jared Kirkwood — …because we’re talking about the spiritual formation of a bunch of people.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Jared Kirkwood — You probably don’t have a bunch of time to whip up a whole bunch of new ideas, you know?

Rich Birch — Let’s go. Yeah, let’s go dream up some new stuff.

Jared Kirkwood — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Yeah, for sure. No, that’s good. Stop starting things. I’ve heard that before. You know, that’s the, you know, we don’t want to just start stuff. You know…

Jared Kirkwood — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …let’s, let’s work on what’s in front of us and the people that are in front of us, the community that’s in front of us. That’s ah yeah, that’s so good. Love it. Love it.

Jared Kirkwood — So if I added one last part, stop starting things…

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Jared Kirkwood — …and just keep shepherding people.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good, dude.

Jared Kirkwood — Just keep shepherding.

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

Jared Kirkwood — Cause if you just keep shepherding people, you really will, the stop starting will take care of itself.

Rich Birch — Right, that’s good. Yeah, because there is a tendency I think to, well, there’s ah definitely a shiny objects shiny object syndrome that we that some leaders have, we have, I have, where it’s like, man, if we just did this, this would be the thing that would unlock that. But oftentimes the thing that actually helps people take steps towards Jesus is stuff we have been doing for a long time, but we just have got our eyes off it. We haven’t been focusing on it. We haven’t been spending the time, effort, energy to do it. So yeah, that’s a good word for sure. and As we’re coming to kind of land the episode today, any kind of final words that you would say is just where we’re kind of wrapping up today’s conversation?

Jared Kirkwood — Well, you know, when I think about the beautiful thing that God is doing right now, he he he is on the move.

Rich Birch — Amen. So true.

Jared Kirkwood — And and has been for thousands of years, and it is such a gift to be a part of this this kingdom that is now and not yet, that the world as it grows seemingly darker around us, and who knows what people attach their hope to. People attach their hope to all kinds of things. But if it isn’t Jesus, it’s going to rise and fall with whatever the current climate is of of culture.

Jared Kirkwood — And as pastors, I’m just so grateful that not only do we place our hope in Jesus, but that’s the main mandate that we have as as leaders, is that we might be able to point people towards Jesus. Because when we do that, we can eliminate some of the doubts, the distractions, the pain of unforeseen circumstances. We can remind them that Jesus is with them in this very moment.

Jared Kirkwood — The reason I say that is is even as pastors, what we get distracted by oftentimes is the management of people. It is the leadership of programs, ministries, and events. We can get sidelined and sideways around the business of the church.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Jared Kirkwood — And if we remind ourselves of the hope of Jesus in our life and our family’s life, then we lead our teams that way. What you pour into your teams is what will overflow into their teams and will overflow into the church. So let’s just keep our eyes on Jesus.

Rich Birch — So good.

Jared Kirkwood — I know it’s so simplistic…

Rich Birch — No, no, not at all. That’s good.

Jared Kirkwood — …and yet I’m a pretty simple, I’m a pretty simple person if I’m being honest.

Rich Birch — No, no, that’s good. No, that’s such such a good word. That’s that’s a good encouragement for us, a great place to end today’s episode. Friends, you really should be following along. You should be following Mariners and tracking what they’re doing. If you you’re not familiar with Rooted, you should definitely check that out. Where do we wanna send people online to track with you or to track with the church? Where’s the best place for us to send them?

Jared Kirkwood — Yeah, I would be I’d be honored if you just checked out what our church is doing across all social channels. We’re at, I almost forgot, @marinerschurch. That would be embarrassing. Like @marinerschurch.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.

Jared Kirkwood — And and I lead our Irvine campus @marinersirvine is is that one. um I’m really boring on Instagram. It’s @jaredkirkwood, but really you’re just going to see pictures of my kids. So hey, as long as you enjoy that, that’s great.

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

Jared Kirkwood — um And then one last thing that I would just say is is we have chosen our our online church model to be um not a live look in, but instead where we teach direct to camera.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Jared Kirkwood — In fact, later on today, I’ll be filming one of our weekend messages. And we have decided, we have made the decision back in the COVID days that we were gonna be committed to building an online community that is not peeking in to the people in front of us. So we contextualize our messages to those who are spread all around the world. Like if you really are thinking about an online strategy for your church, we have decided that this is best for us.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Jared Kirkwood — And I’d love for you to just take a look at what we’re doing. If you watch a couple of messages, you’ll really understand how we shape and direct um and contextualize to ah did um a community that will never really be in the in in relationship with one another. And they can be in relationship, but not in person.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Jared Kirkwood — And so if you’re interested, we’re committed to it and would love to teach, you know, however we’re doing it.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. I, yeah, I would encourage that. That’s a great that’s a great word. Maybe something we can have down the road, having to have more conversation about, but it it is… ah Mariners is one of the churches that I point to, because it seems like, you know, there is like this movement of saying, hey, we should get out of all this stuff. And I’m like, eh, that’s not what I see in churches that are prevailing. And Mariners is one of those saying, hey, we’re trying to invent the future and figure out how do we connect with people. And yeah you’re doing a great job on that front. So Jared, I really appreciate you being here today, sir. Thank you so much. Honored to get a chance to spend some time with you today. Thank you, sir.

Jared Kirkwood — Thank you, Rich. Thanks for all that you’re doing. Thanks for the unSeminary podcast and all the resources you provide. Big fan, man. Appreciate it.

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