Rick Langston and Daniel Simmons from The Summit Church share their insights on successfully leading a multi-site church with clarity and purpose. They discuss the church's evolution and the importance of maintaining a unified identity across campuses while ensuring flexibility in local engagement. The conversation emphasizes empowering leaders, effective communication, and the PACE framework to foster mission-driven growth. Listeners will appreciate practical strategies for building community and nurturing leadership in a growing church environment.

Multisite churches have dramatically increased—from just a few hundred in the early 2000s to over 5,000 today. I’ve had the honor of being at the core this movement for nearly 2.5 decades, having led 13 multisite launches and coached many more. My goal in this solo episode is to share insights from my own experience to help you determine if your church is ready for multisite and how to sidestep common pitfalls that could cost your church significantly in the long run. All month on unSeminary’s All About Multisite series, join us on Wednesdays for practical solo episodes, diving deep into the essentials of successful multisite strategies. Plus, don’t miss helpful Thursday interviews featuring prevailing multisite churches that maximize this model to reach more people effectively. Episode Highlights: Why Multisite? Multisite as a powerful method for reaching more people, engaging more volunteers, and significantly increasing conversion rates. Multisite is not a solution for declining or stagnant churches, you “reproduce what you are.” Key Preconditions for Launch: Healthy Momentum: Your church should already be growing faster than your local community. Only 6% of churches meet this criterion, which makes your church a standout candidate if you do. Clear Vision & Mission: Everyone involved must clearly understand the “why” behind launching new campuses. Multisite should focus on mission-driven outreach, not simply convenience or ego-driven expansion. Strong Volunteer Core: Aim to mobilize about 10% of your current congregation as a dedicated volunteer team for the new campus. We discuss the three-to-one ratio; for every volunteer, expect roughly three regular attendees at the new site. Financial Margin: Greater upfront investment correlates directly with stronger initial attendance and long-term campus success. We talk about how the “launch large” philosophy leads to sustained impact. Reproducible Model: Ensure your ministry systems—such as weekend services, children’s ministry, assimilation processes, volunteer appreciation, and financial stewardship—are standardized, scalable, and reproducible. Mergers vs. New Plants: Approximately half of multisite campuses today come from mergers. You should consider mergers/rebirths due to their inherent benefits, including established community presence, history, and trust. Nearly 90% of merged churches report positive outcomes. Common Mistakes to Avoid: Fuzzy Vision and Lack of Unity: Launch only with complete leadership and theological alignment. Clear, mission-focused vision is crucial. Underfunding: Investing adequately in the launch budget ensures stronger attendance. Poor Location Choice: Ideal multisite locations are within a 15-30 minute drive of your original campus. We discuss “Marchetti’s Constant,” highlighting people’s willingness to travel around 30 minutes. Weak Launch Team: Your initial volunteer core should include 50-150 dedicated adults. The health of this group significantly impacts long-term campus success. Wrong Campus Pastor Selection: Successful campuses predominantly choose internal hires who embody the church’s culture and DNA. Prioritize internal leadership pipelines for campus pastors. Inconsistency Across Campuses: Maintain programming consistency across all campuses to replicate original campus learnings. Avoid treating new sites as experimental grounds for entirely new approaches. Leadership Readiness: Assess leadership readiness by confirming unity among senior leadership, ensuring clarity of vision, fostering an apprentice-based leadership culture, and confirming Spirit-led confidence in your decision to expand. Recommended Resources: Warren Bird’s Research Book: Better Together by Warren Bird and Jim Tomberlin PortableChurch.com

Thanks for joining us at the unSeminary podcast. In this episode we’re talking with Kara Powell, the Executive Director of the Fuller Youth Institute and Chief of Leadership Formation at Fuller Theological Seminary. How is your church engaging with the next generation? Building connection and trust with young people can be difficult in today’s world. Kara’s work is all about helping churches equip leaders and engage young people, and in this conversation, she shares powerful insights for creating a church that truly connects with today’s youth. Hope amidst declining trust. // One of the biggest reasons young people are stepping away from the church is a crisis of trust. Many view the church as hypocritical, unkind, and full of moral failure. However, research shows that while many teenagers are hesitant about church, they remain deeply intrigued by Jesus and His teachings. This means churches have a unique opportunity to rebuild trust by embodying Jesus’ love and authenticity. Five keys to faith formation. // Kara outlines five essential components for fostering faith in young people and what it means to relationally disciple them. To start, young people need adults who share their faith and invest in them personally. Second, young people crave authentic spiritual practices, like prayer and worship, and need to be learning them in trusted communities. Third, this generation is passionate about justice and serving and wants to contribute meaningfully. Fourth, families are partners in shaping the faith of young people, and churches must equip them for that role. And lastly, a thriving church intentionally integrates young people into its vision and ministry. Diversity is an expectation. // Today’s younger generations expect diversity because they experience it daily in their schools, extracurricular activities, and communities. If a church does not reflect the ethnic and economic diversity of its neighborhood, young people perceive it as out of touch. Ask yourself, does your church really reflect the diversity of your neighborhood? If not, how can you be more intentional about engaging with the broader community in authentic ways? Love your neighbors. // Evaluate what percentage of your church’s resources are focused on yourself versus serving and loving your broader community. Too often, churches focus inward, investing the majority of their time and finances on internal programs. Seek ways to love your community through service and outreach, as these acts of love make a profound impact and draw people in. Build a Transformation Team. // To implement meaningful change, Kara recommends assembling a Transformation Team—a group of 5 to 12 individuals from different areas of the church who are committed to driving change. This team should include young people and representatives from various ministries (for example, children’s ministry, worship, missions, etc.). By working together across departments, churches can ensure that engagement with young people is woven into the fabric of the entire church. Four zones to help change. // Kara’s latest book, Future-Focused Church, co-authored with Jake Mulder and Ray Chang, provides a roadmap for enacting change in the church. The book introduces a four framework that includes: Who (who can help catalyze change), Here (what’s your church’s current reality), There (where is God calling you), and How (how will you actually make the change). This structured approach helps churches strategically plan for the future and avoid common pitfalls in implementing new initiatives. Visit futurefocusedchurch.com to learn more about Kara’s new book, Future-Focused ChurchLeading Through Change, Engaging the Next Generation, & Building a More Diverse Tomorrow, and explore the resources available. Plus, check out Fuller Youth Institute at fulleryouthinstitute.org for help coming alongside the young people in your community, and connect with Kara on social media @KPowellFYI. Click here to listen to the unSeminary podcast episode Healing the Racial Divide in Your Church with Derwin Gray. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live! Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation. You know, this is one of those topics… in fact, I was reflecting recently, it revolves around one of the saddest things I ever heard a church leader say, which was, “It’s been decades since there were young people at our church.” And man, we don’t want that to happen at any of our churches.Rich Birch — And today we are in for a real treat. It’s our honor to have Kara Powell. She’s the executive director of the Fuller Youth Institute and the chief leadership and the chief of leadership formation at Fuller Theological Seminary. That’s a lot. That’s a long title. she’s really an expert in this whole area. She speaks regularly at national parenting and leadership conferences, and is an author and co-author of a number of, from my perspective, must-read books. She’s got a brand new book that’s just come out that we want to make sure you read. But, Kara, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.Kara Powell — Thanks, Rich. It’s wonderful to be with you and all of your awesome listeners and viewers.Rich Birch — This is great. I’m I’m honored that you would be with us. For for those that might not be familiar, kind of unpack a little bit about your role at Fuller Youth Institute and Fuller Theological Seminary in general.Kara Powell — Yeah, well, I’m a faculty member, and I certainly love that role at Fuller Seminary. You already mentioned another role I’m passionate about, which is I’m the executive director of the Fuller Youth Institute. And our mission there is to equip diverse leaders so that faithful young people can change our world. And we do that by turning research into resources. Rich Birch — That’s good. Kara Powell — So we take the best research that Fuller and others are doing and turn it into practical resources. One of FYI’s major initiatives is the ten by ten collaboration. So an additional role is that I’m the founder of the ten by ten collaboration, which seeks to help faith matter for 10 million US teenagers in the next ten years in the spirit of John 10:10. Kara Powell — And then my broadest role at Fuller is I’m the chief of leadership formation, as you said. And that means I oversee all of Fuller’s non-degree training. And so really, in all these roles, I’m about turning research into resources. Rich Birch — Love it. Kara Powell — And in many cases, that aligns with the needs and opportunities of the next generation.Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s so good. Well, you’ve been influential in my own thinking. And so many. I know you’ve helped so many people. And so I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation. You know, one of the things that I mentioned, this on the top, literally one of the saddest conversations I had was with a church leader in a church that we ended up that the physical building we ended up adopting. And one of the things they said was, man, there, it has been decades since there were young people at this church. Rich Birch — And, you know, this is a major challenge for many of our churches engaging young people. I’d love to dive right in. What are some key reasons younger generations disconnect from the church and and what can we do to address that? That’s like a huge question, but let’s start there.Kara Powell — Yeah, absolutely.Rich Birch — I feel like you’d say, well, that’s my life’s work. So, you know…Kara Powell — Sit down. We’re gonna have a long conversation about it.Rich Birch — Yes, exactly.Kara Powell — So, you know, it’s impossible to point to just one factor that is causing young people to distance themselves from the church. But I’ll say, one that we’re hearing about more and more these days is that young people are not trusting the church. Now let’s let’s back, you know, zoom out a little bit. I will say, in general, people are not trusting institutions. Rich Birch — Yep. Kara Powell — Young people are not trusting institutions. And in particular, young people are not trusting the church. They view the church as unkind, hypocritical, full of moral failure. And so as a result, young people are skittish about being connected with the church. As one pastor’s 13 year old daughter said to him recently, like, why should I tell others I go to church; people who go to church or jerks? Rich Birch — Oh wow. Kara Powell — And that’s that’s kind of the reputation in our world. Now, I’m an optimist. And so, you know that that’s the bad news. But I’ll say, here’s the good news, and the Barna Group has done some fantastic research on this, that while well, while teenagers in the US and globally are often, distant from the church, like, they’re very pro-Jesus. Rich Birch — That’s good. Kara Powell — There’s a lot about Jesus that they find really intriguing and appealing. While they might say the church is unloving, they understand that Jesus is a person of love. So the good news for us is the more and more that we can all state the obvious: be who Jesus wants us to be… Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Kara Powell — …and do what Jesus wants us to do, I mean, that’s gone on for so many reasons. Rich Birch — Yes. Kara Powell — But we also think and have seen that that’s really attractive for young people.Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s like, so I’m classic Gen X and, you know, when I get to heaven, I think Bono’s going to be leading worship there. Kara Powell — Totally. Rich Birch — And he said, you know, I love Jesus. I’m just not so sure about his friends. And you know, that that seems to continue to resonate in, you know, in generation. I know in your work you’ve emphasized, you know, trying to break that down a little bit more. How do we build trust, relational discipleship, kingdom diversity and loving neighbors? Why are these important? Why are these important to kind of unpack those? What do you mean by those? Why are those important for us to be thinking about?Kara Powell — Yeah. Well, here’s what they all share. First off, I want to say they’re very grounded in scripture, and scripture’s invitations and commands. Secondly, they reflect some of the most important opportunities according to what we’re seeing through research and real recent data. And then we also have seen them be really powerful catalysts for churches. And so so that’s what all three of them have in common. You know, when it comes to relational discipleship, especially of young people, too often we in the church, and this is very much Kara including herself in that “we”, we’ve offered program maybe we’ve offered teaching, but we haven’t offered real relational discipleship. And when churches do that, especially when the next generation, especially investing in the next generation, what’s so exciting is not only our young people changed, but the whole church has changed. Rich Birch — So true. Kara Powell — So we think one of the most, you know, exciting catalysts for revival, renewal, whatever you want to call it based on your theological tradition is, is emphasizing relational discipleship. Kara Powell — And secondly, when it comes to kingdom diversity, you know, God’s made us in God’s image and yet we all reflect that in different ways, different ethnicities, different cultures. And, you know, in the US, we crossed a line in 2020, according to the US census, that now half of those under 18 are young people of color. So, you know, the US has never been more ethnically diverse than it is now. And how can churches not force that, but how can we reflect the communities in which we live? I mean, that’s our that’s our ongoing question to churches. Kara Powell — And then lastly, I mean, we just can’t get away from the importance of love. I was on an early morning prayer meeting this morning with folks, and we were looking at what’s going on in our world. And, you know, one of one person said, what we need to do is kind of move away from culture wars and instead lean into love wars. Now, you know, I don’t love military, violent metaphors. Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Kara Powell — So I’m I’m not saying let’s like, go brand that and hashtag that and all that, but but like, wow! You know, back to what young people think of the church. Like what if, what if we could be known… Rich Birch — Right. Kara Powell — …as some of the most loving people on the planet? What a difference that would make. So we think that young people and kingdom diversity and really loving our neighbors is Jesus’ command. They just offer amazing leverage right now for churches.Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. Why don’t we why don’t we step through those, double click on each of those and kind of unpack it a little bit at a practical level, this idea of relational discipleship. Kara Powell — Yeah. Yeah. Rich Birch — Yeah, I went I found it convicting when you said that I’m the one that’s thinking systems and scale and like, okay, how do we scale this thing up? Let’s come up with a new program. Kara Powell — Yeah. Rich Birch — But it’s deeper than that. Unpack that. Relational discipleship. What do you mean by that?Kara Powell — Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Well, we we especially expand this on the ten by ten website, but we’ve identified five keys to faith formation, for young people, and what it means to relationally disciple young people. And I’ll just I’ll just hit them real quickly.Kara Powell — Number one, it starts with an adult young person relationship where faith is shared with adults. Adults are sharing faith with young people. As Paul describes in first Thessalonians 2:8, I was so delighted to share with you not just the gospel, but my very life. Rich Birch — That’s so good. Kara Powell — Second, that young people are engaged in spiritual practices and learning. I mean, that’s something exciting we’re seeing with this generation. They really want to experience God. You know, they love prayer and worship, when it’s in a community they trust. They’re really drawn to that, as well as interesting teaching. Third, that young people are serving, like that’s one of the great things about this generation. They want to be involved, sharing their faith, seeking justice. Kara Powell — And then the fourth and fifth are that families are partners in the faith formation of their young people. And then lastly, that the overall church prioritizes and emphasizes young people. So when, as we’ve looked at the research on youth discipleship as well as scripture, those are the five drivers that we think are most important.Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s specifically on the adult, the kind of adult-young person relationship… Kara Powell — Yeah, yeah. Rich Birch — …there’s I know you’ve done a lot of work on this area, but that to me that that is a profound understanding. I think we’ve so much of our programming bands to like, let’s keep everybody together… Kara Powell — Yeah, yeah. Rich Birch — …as opposed to cross-generational. Talk a little bit about that.Kara Powell — Yeah. Yeah. Well, one of the metaphors that I like to use is, you know, growing up when Grandma and Grandpa Eckman—my grandparents—had all of us over, it’s way too many people to sit in one room, say, on a holiday meal. So they created the adults’ table and the kids’ table.Rich Birch — Kids’ table. Yes.Kara Powell — Yeah. And that’s what we tended to do in churches… Rich Birch — Yeah, yep. Kara Powell — …is create the adults’ table and the kids’ table, two separate experiences. And let me tell you, we’ve been well intentioned, like I’ve been part of the professionalization of youth ministry. Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Kara Powell — I have championed that. And yet we’ve been so well-intentioned. And yet the, the, the backlash is that young people are separate, silo-ized, segregated, which is not a verb I use lightly. And so, you know, when they graduate from high school, they they know the youth group, they know their youth pastor, but they don’t have a vision for what it is to be part of church. So, you know, do 16 year olds need to be on their own, some talking about life stage issues? You bet. Just like 46 year olds and 76 year olds do. Rich Birch — Sure. Kara Powell — But how do we find the right balance when, yes, there’s some of that, but there’s also a lot of intentional mentoring that’s happening in a faith community.Rich Birch — Yeah, I know in my own life this when particularly when you’ve talked about this in the past, this has had profound impact on me, reflecting on my own experience, where I’ve had this weird disconnect in my own life, where the churches I lead in, I’m not sure the church would that would be that would appeal to my parents. When we first became Christian… Kara Powell — Interesting. Yeah. Rich Birch — …you know, we we were in a very small church and very multi-generational. Kara Powell — Yeah, yeah. Rich Birch — And, you know, then I’ve led in these very like you say, kids table, adult table churches over the years, which has been fascinating.Rich Birch — Let’s talk about kingdom diversity. Kara Powell — Yes. Rich Birch — Every zip code in America is more diverse today than it was ten years ago. Kara Powell — Yes. Rich Birch — It will be more diverse ten years from now. And and it seems like young people have always been appealed, you know, have always wanted kind of a diversity. Is this different than just normal kind of maturation we’ve seen, or is there something behind this that’s even more like, hey, this is an emphatic thing we need to really be leaning into?Kara Powell — Yeah, well, I think all of us, but especially our young people, are experiencing diversity more, so they expect it more… Rich Birch — Yes. Oh that’s good. Yeah. Kara Powell — …other spheres. And so when you know, when they’re when their school experience from 8 to 3 is very ethnically diverse, culturally diverse, and then they show up at youth group that night or church on the weekend and it’s not that way, well, then they get a sense that the church is out of touch. Rich Birch — Right. Kara Powell — And is it really engaged in the community. Rich Birch — Right. Kara Powell — So so yeah. And you know, we constantly say you mentioned zip codes, like we encourage churches like ask yourself, do I reflect the ethnic and economic diversity of our neighborhood? And if not, then how do we be more intentional in building relationships, and who we have up front in leadership and the kind of communities that we create? So, you know, we’re not asking you to force diversity, but if you’re loving your neighbors, then hopefully that’s reflected in your neighbors being part of your community.Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s good. That’s good. I had Derwin Gray on this podcast… Kara Powell — Oh, great. Rich Birch — …take me to town on this issue. Kara Powell — Great. Rich Birch — And I would highly recommend you go back, friends, and listen to that. I think it could be, you know, just an eye opening experience for sure. So loving neighbors is the last one of these. This is can be a soft thing, but I know you don’t mean it that way. Kara Powell — Yeah Rich Birch — There’s like it’s got to have hard traction make a difference in our churches. What does it look like for a church that’s actually loving its community, and how does that connect with young people?Kara Powell — Yeah. Well, I think a poignant question that I’ve been convicted by when I’ve been a pastor is what percent of our churches’ resources are focused on ourselves, and what percent are focused on what it means to love our neighbors. Rich Birch — Ouch! Kara Powell — And, and for a lot of churches, it’s like 90/10, 95/5, maybe 85/15. But, you know, as we think about Scripture, I’m not going to suggest a percentage. I’ll let the Holy Spirit convict all of us on that. But you know what? What kind of allocation would we think Scripture would have to say when it comes to our own internal community versus understanding the needs of our external community, and then tangibly responding? And, you know, the good news is we tell churches all the time, like, please don’t start a bunch of new programs. There’s probably already nonprofits and other ministries in your community already trying to love people. And so, you know, let’s let’s let that kind of love be what’s compelling. You know, we’re we’re recording this not too long after the fires in Los Angeles.Kara Powell — So I’m sitting in my dining room in Pasadena, and we were evacuated for five days. Rich Birch — Oh wow. Kara Powell — And we know so many who have lost so much. And we have a 22 year old living with us who’s been displaced, and a friend of our family, and honored to do that. There’s just a lot of brokenness, but I’ll tell you, there are bright spots in churches when churches are loving. Rich Birch — It’s true. Kara Powell — What one one friend was telling me that, you know, when they were evacuated, they they came to our church, which had opened its facilities in the middle of the night to be a home. And their parents live in their back house. Dad’s an atheist. He’s had no interest in church. What he saw in our church’s community in those first 24, 48 hours. Like he started coming to church now, because he saw the body of Christ in action, loving each other and loving the neighborhood. Rich Birch — Love it. Love it. Kara Powell — And so, so it’s often I mean, at least what we’re seeing in in LA is in the midst of the brokenness, there’s some real beauty that comes from us loving others.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I love that. Just even in my own backyard, there was a tornado that went through a number of years ago, and I was super proud of our church. We leaned in and and in fact, there’s a whole ripple. I was just reminded yesterday, there’s a whole ripple in our church of like, families that got connected to our church, not because of some fancy program… Kara Powell — Yeah, yeah. Totally. Yeah. Rich Birch — …not because of some thing. It was like the tornado ripped through and within, literally within hours, people from our church were over there helping… Kara Powell — That’s awesome. Rich Birch — …and and that had huge impact. That’s, yeah, that’s great. Okay. One of the things I was struck by in your work is this idea of a transformation team. Kara Powell — Yeah. Rich Birch – It’s it’s like a super practical kind of we’re thinking about change. What is the transformation team? Why is it important to help us understand this concept?Kara Powell — Yeah. Well, I’m guessing most people who are listening or watching this right now, like you’re probably watching it on your own. Rich Birch — Yes.Kara Powell — And while you can listen to a podcast on your own, you can’t bring about change on your own. Rich Birch — That’s true. Kara Powell — And so as we’ve journeyed with over a thousand churches who have successfully made changes toward what we’re talking about, as well as other areas. Like, well, while our book focuses on young people, kingdom diversity, and loving our neighbors, this is true for any change you want to bring about. You want to become more prayerful. You want to become more worshipful. You know, whatever it might be, we highly recommend starting a transformation team. And that’s a group of 5 to 12 who are very focused on the change, who are really who are really dialed into that. That’s probably 1 or 2, pastors, but maybe it’s not led by a pastor. Maybe it’s led by a member of the congregation who really has the vision and skills to lead. One of the interesting things that we’ve seen is transformation teams—like, let’s just let’s double click on young people for a second. A lot of churches want to become more, you know, mindful and more focused on the next generation. Well, we would encourage your transformation team then to have a few young people in it. RIch Birch — Right, right. Kara Powell — You know, have people who who you’re trying to better love be part of what you’re of your transformation team. But, you know, we’ve also seen churches have great success by having a few young people, but then really bringing together people from all different areas of the church. Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. Kara Powell — Someone from children’s ministry, someone from worship, someone from tech, someone from missions, someone from prayer. And so, you know, you can think about now, how can young people or whatever change you’re wanting to make, become woven into the fabric in all these areas? So, you know, we have a lot of specific recommendations: meet every 2 to 4 weeks, you know, commit to something like six months, most likely, etc. But really, it starts with getting the right people. And we, we recommend some of some who are really core to what the change you’re trying to be and represents that change, but then also diversity across the church.Rich Birch — Yeah. Love it. What about the mixture of like kind of the big idea people versus the like, guys that love the spreadsheets or people that love the spreadsheets. Talk us through. What does that look like on that?Kara Powell — Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, like with most everything, we love all of that. Rich Birch — Yes. Kara Powell — Like, it’s important to have, it’s important to have both. So you know I think a question becomes where what is our team biased toward, and how do we need to correct for that? Rich Birch — That’s good, that’s good. Kara Powell — So, you know and I see this. In fact, I lead two teams at Fuller where one is very big picture and struggles with execution. And the other is awesome at execution, but sometimes can lack vision. Rich Birch — Right. That’s good. Kara Powell — And so so, you know, we’re we’re constantly trying to compensate for that. Who who can we add who can we bring in, even for just a time period to really help with execution or to really make sure that we’re dreaming the right big God sized dreams?Rich Birch — That’s cool. That’s good.Rich Birch — Well, yeah. There’s a lot we could talk about there but I love that. Just even practical takeaway. Kind of a bit of a meta conversation or discussion about you as a leader. I, so this area, working with young people, thinking about the future, I feel like there’s a lot of people in this area who are like all doom and gloom. Who, like, are like, oh my goodness, the world is falling. It’s all terrible. But you seem to be able to hold this balance of like you’re realist. I don’t get the sense of like, oh, your head’s in the sky, like, hey, things are everything’s perfect. But you do come to the best days of the church are ahead of us. Kara Powell — Yeah. Rich Birch — Which I love. I find as I just want to honor you for that. I think it’s incredible that you have that kind of posture. At least that’s my opinion of you. Kara Powell — Yeah. Rich Birch — That’s what I’ve seen you lead from. What gives you confidence in that belief? Kara Powell — Yeah. Rich Birch — What gives you the confidence that like, hey, there’s good days coming when you’re staring into some tough realities that we face as a church?Kara Powell — Yep. My theology gives me that confidence.Rich Birch — Love it. Love it. Yes.Kara Powell — So, so, yeah, I, I’m very realist. I’m married to an engineer. Like, we are two realistic people. We are a realistic family. Rich Birch — Yes, yeah.Kara Powell — But. And I think I’m realistic about the struggles that young people have connecting to the church. I see it in, you know, close friends of our family, etc. But in the midst of those challenges, I believe in a big, loving God… Rich Birch — That’s good. Kara Powell — …who’s constantly renewing, who’s constantly reforming, who’s constantly drawing people to God’s self. So, you know, we would say we’re not we’re not necessarily in an era of decline and decay, but we’re in an era of reimagining and renewal. Rich Birch — That’s good. Kara Powell — So I would say it starts with my theology, but then I’ll it a second less important but still important reason is it has to do with what we are seeing with young people these days. Like young people, again, open to Jesus, they are open to Jesus. And then secondly, when adults can build trusted relationships with young people, young people are hungry to get time with adults.Kara Powell — So, you know, it takes time. But, you know, some of the very encouraging research on trust by Brené Brown and others is that when it comes to building trust in general, it’s not grand, heroic gestures that build trust. It’s small, everyday acts of listening… Rich Birch — That’s good. Kara Powell — …remembering, caring, asking again. And so, you know, for listeners right now. Like if you want to build trust, maybe there’s a young person who’s come to your mind like, why don’t you just text them… Rich Birch — Right. Kara Powell — …and right now and say, you know, thinking of you, how can I be praying for you? And then, you know, if they respond, then ask 3 or 4 days later, hey, I was praying for you. How did that test go? How are you doing in that conflict with your girlfriend? You know, whatever it might be. And so the good news is, any of us really, any adult, can build a trusted relationship with young people, and young people are hungry for that.Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Well, you’ve got a book that just came out “Future Focused Church: Leading Through Change, Engaging the Next Generation and Building a More Diverse Tomorrow”. Talk to us. So this is a big project, pulling together a book with a couple co-authors on this. What’s your what was the drive? What’s the thing that kept you up at night that you’re like, we’ve got to get this into a book? What are you hoping that people will get from this?Kara Powell — Yeah. Well, I’m so glad that Jake Mulder and Ray Chang, my two co-authors, they shared my hunger to help churches understand what needs to change. A lot of what we’ve been talking about here, Rich. But but I think a tougher question often is how do you bring about change? Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good. Kara Powell — How does the church actually change? And, you know, leaders listening to this now, you know, this struggle of bringing about change. According to Harvard Business Review, about 70% of changes that leaders try to enact end up failing. So, you know, if you’re if you’re batting average is around 70%, well, then you’re right on par. Rich Birch — Yes. Kara Powell — Jesus sometimes struggled to bring about change.Rich Birch — Yes, yes.Kara Powell — So so based on scripture, based on really good research that others have done and based on how we’ve journeyed with over a thousand churches at the full youth institute, we’ve come up with a four-step map, a four-zone map that any church can use to make change. The three areas we’ve been talking about are really any area.Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Well, I want to encourage friends that are listening. And you know we don’t do this. We don’t typically have authors on. I really I personally, I think, you know, I got a chance to kind of sneak a little bit into the book, and I think this could be a great book to do as a leadership team, maybe elders, your staff team, that sort of thing… Kara Powell — Yeah, yeah, yep. Rich Birch — …to really help us think through, hey, what does the future look like? So, you know, there may be a pastor who’s listening in, who’s feeling stuck. They’re like, you know, things are are not going well in our church. What’s kind of one practical insight from the book that, you know, could help them be a future focused church, that could help them think about, okay, how do we get unstuck? How do we how do we kind of become more ready for the future?Kara Powell — Yeah. So I mentioned we have a four-zone map in the book. Rich Birch — Yep. Kara Powell — And it’s who, you know, who is trying to bring about the change. Who’s your community here? What’s your current reality there? Where is God calling you? And how, how do you actually make the change? Rich Birch — That’s good. Kara Powell — So in the book we start with who and we start with who are the people who can help you catalyze change? Rich Birch — That’s good. Kara Powell — And how do you start listening to your community. You know, really, almost without exception, when churches listen to their community, they’re better able to love their community. Rich Birch — That’s so good. Kara Powell — I can’t tell you how many churches have come to us with, well, we just started this new thing for young people. And we just started this new thing for our neighborhood.Rich Birch — I’m laughing because I feel like I’ve been there. Kara Powell — You’ve done that. Oh, thank you. Yes, Rich, I’m actually confessing here. In addition to sharing our research.Rich Birch — I started this thing. Why are they not coming?Kara Powell — Exactly. It’s like because you talked to none of them. Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Kara Powell — And so so, you know, and we have seen churches pause and say, okay, wait, we thought we thought young adults, for instance, we thought we’d host a young adult new worship service. Or a young adult Sunday school. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Kara Powell — And they offer it. Young adults aren’t drawn to it. You know, a lot of times what young adults want is they want like vocational mentoring. Rich Birch — Right. Kara Powell — They they twenty-somethings want to have dinner with people in the church. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Kara Powell — And so they don’t necessarily want a more separate programming. They want more cross-pollination. Rich Birch — That’s good. Kara Powell — But you only learn that when you’re spending time with them. So. So, who? First step, first zone. And it starts with actually listening to those you’re trying to serve and creating that transformation team.Rich Birch — That’s so good. I love that. Any, can you think of any kind of interesting stories you’ve run into? Churches that have done a particularly good job on the listening piece, that like, oh, hey, they did a great job listening. You can think of an example of that?Kara Powell — Yeah, absolutely. It’s one of my favorite stories to tell, actually. There was a church that we studied in the Upper Midwest that had really struggled with their growth and had shrunk quite a bit, like they were contemplating shutting their doors. They were a church of 50, 75, something like that. But the leadership came together and said, you know what? We are not too old, it is not too late, and the road ahead is not too hard, and felt called by God to to do what we’re talking about, loving their neighborhood, prioritizing and listening to young people. They were near a college, and so they deployed more resources to build relationships with college students. Listen to college students. Well, that church that was about to shut its doors, it’s now a church of 1500 people, a thousand of whom are under 30.Kara Powell — Now, in all fairness, Rich, that was actually one of the more dramatic turnaround stories. Rich Birch — Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Kara Powell — It’s much more likely to be slower incremental growth. Rich Birch — Yep. Kara Powell — But you know, I thanks for asking me to share a story because I love that story just as a sign of you never know what God’s going to do. Rich Birch – Right, absolutely. Kara Powell — And so, you know, we say not only the best days of the church are ahead, but we believe whoever you are, the best days of your church are ahead.Rich Birch — Oh that’s so good. See this is, friends, this is why you should be following Kara and and doing read everything she produces and this great stuff. It’s super inspiring. So let’s talk a little bit about the book. I’m sure people can get it at Amazon. Are there other places we want to send them to pick up copies. Kara Powell — Yeah. Rich Birch — You know, where do we want to send them online to to get this?Kara Powell — Yeah – futurefocusedchurch.com, futurefocusedchurch.com – one word. We have a host of resources there that you can check out as well as order the book. So that is a great place to dive into our content.Rich Birch — Nice. That’s that’s so good. I’m I would love for, like I say, friends, I really do think it’d be a great kind of team study. Something to do together. Don’t buy one, buy ten. And, you know, get together with a group of people. Because I think, by definition, like you were saying, I think there could be a problem with this book in that you read it and then you’re like, yes, I want to change. Kara Powell — Right. Rich Birch — But really, we should be doing this, like you said, in a team, in your group. Kara Powell — Yep, yep. Rich Birch — And let’s talk about this, you know, this together. Any other kind of thoughts about the book or anything else you want to share just as we kind of wrap up today’s episode?Kara Powell — Yeah, I will say we see this all the time with churches. And this was true at my own church as my own church went through the change process. Churches often under… excuse me, overestimate what can be done in a year and underestimate what can be done in 2 or 3 years.Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s great. That’s great. Kara Powell — Part of what we map out in the book actually, is we have a six month and a 18 month change process that helps you set the right goals for that first year, and then continue towards God’s best future for you over that years two and three. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Kara Powell — So I wish there were really quick fixes. There’s certainly some quick improvements, but it usually takes months if not years to really change culture.Rich Birch — So yeah, that’s good. I’ve joked in other contexts that, you know, some of the stuff, some of the work I’ve done is like similar. It’s like how to grow your church in 1000 days, but no one would buy that resource. Kara Powell — Right, right, right. Rich Birch — Like no one is interested in that. They want the quick fix. Kara Powell — Yep, yep. Rich Birch — But that’s not how it works. It’s got to be methodical and process oriented.Kara Powell — So true, Rich.Rich Birch — Well, Kara, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for being on today’s episode. Where do we want to send people online if they want to track with you with FYI all of that, where do we send them to connect with you?Kara Powell — Fulleryouthinstitute.org is our website. I’m on I’m on Twitter/X, Facebook, and Instagram at @kpowellFYI. It’s my first initial KPowellFYI as in Fuller Youth Institute.Rich Birch — That’s great. And I know I said this earlier, but I do want to honor you for the great work you’ve done. Thanks for being a gift to the church and thanks for being on the show today.Kara Powell — I am honored in return to be on your show. Thanks, Rich.

Diana Rush, the Senior Director of Build Community at Eastside Christian Church, shares her expertise on navigating the complexities of middle management in large church settings. She discusses the critical balance between communicating effectively with senior leadership and supporting direct reports. Diana emphasizes the importance of self-awareness in leadership and building trust through reliability and transparency. She also addresses the challenges of fostering a supportive culture while managing team dynamics and streamlining operations across multiple campuses.

Amy Anderson, managing director at The Unstuck Group, brings her extensive expertise in multi-site church leadership to the conversation. She discusses how churches can identify growth barriers and emphasizes the importance of assessing and restructuring staffing to enhance productivity. Amy shares strategies for creating effective staffing plans, monitoring key indicators of organizational health, and fostering meaningful relationships within church teams. Highlights include the tension between lead and executive pastors and the necessity of aligning vision with strategy.

Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Tyler Vance, the COO of Apollos, a digital platform designed to help churches thrive by using technologies for personal growth. Despite being more digitally connected than ever, people lack deep, meaningful relationships. Gen Z has often been called the loneliest generation in history. However, churches are uniquely positioned to solve this problem. Tune in to learn how you can leverage technology to foster authentic community in your church and help people grow in their faith. Daily habits that drive discipleship. // Healthy habits are a necessary part of growth. Apollos prioritizes daily time with God, prayer, and gratitude. These three habits are the most transformative for a person’s spiritual development. When consistently practiced, they not only strengthen individuals’ faith but are also leading indicators of increased church engagement, generosity, and attendance. Prayer connects the church. // One of the most impactful features of Apollos is its ability to facilitate prayer within a church community. The app allows users to submit prayer requests in about 60 seconds and receive immediate prayer from others in the congregation. Prayer connects the hearts of believers in a powerful way and this real-time interaction fosters a deeper sense of belonging and community. Leveraging data for ministry impact. // Church leaders often want as much data as possible, but many struggle to effectively use it. Apollos not only collects data but also helps churches interpret it to guide ministry decisions. For example, understanding common prayer requests can help pastors equip the church by developing sermon series, courses and other resources to address their congregation’s needs. Be customer-centric. // Tyler emphasizes that a great digital product is not the solution, but rather churches need a comprehensive strategy to integrate digital engagement with their overall mission. By encouraging profile creation, the app functions as the new connection card, helping churches identify felt needs and track engagement. But churches must provide real value to members rather than just using apps as donation portals. Just because you think something is valuable doesn’t mean that your congregation will. Be customer-focused and demonstrate how the app benefits your people. Apollos as a strategic partner. // Rather than merely providing a platform, Apollos functions as a team behind the scenes, ensuring that churches have a seamless, high-quality digital experience. Unlike many church apps that are merely content repositories, Apollos integrates engagement, community, and discipleship. With a white-label approach, churches maintain their own branding while benefiting from the expertise and support of Apollos’ team of developers and strategists. Visit apollos.app to learn more about how they can help your church thrive. Plus, listen to the episode Beyond Sundays: Liquid Church’s 24/7 Ministry Model with Lauren Bercarich here. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: 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! Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Man, you are in for a real treat today. Super excited for today’s conversation. It’s a follow-up conversation, which you know, that’s like us double clicking, getting a little bit deeper, peeling back the onion on a conversation that we had last spring. And we’re going a little bit deeper today and talking with Tyler Vance. Rich Birch — You might be saying, who is Tyler? He is the COO of an organization called Apollos. Apollos is a digital platform that helps churches thrive. They’re working to reverse the trend of disconnection and help people flourish. Apollos believes that strong community and healthy habits are necessary ingredients for personal growth. And they leverage technology to make those realities happen literally for millions of people. Prior to, or at least you know in in kind of a part of his past life, Tyler was also a part of Life Life.Church. You might’ve heard of them before. He was both a pastor and technology leader over there. Tyler, welcome. So glad you’re here.Tyler Vance — Thank you for having me, Rich. Man, that’s quite an introduction. And yeah, I have spent many years as a pastor in a local church. And ah so I I get the opportunity to have a different lens when it comes to technology. I don’t approach it as a technologist first, but as a pastor first. And I love that. And I’m I’m super grateful for that.Rich Birch — Yeah. Love it. Declaring my bias upfront, leaders, you should be leaning in and listening to today’s conversation. Cause I think you’re going to be, you might be a little bit surprised and you might look at some of your current technologies and be like, Hmm, I feel like they weren’t designed by a pastor. So, uh, we might challenge you a little bit today, which is good. Rich Birch — Now you make this bold claim about the, well, first of all, fill in the picture, give us anything else there, kind of your background, anything that I missed or kind of just from a general open report of you that you want to make sure we talk about.Tyler Vance — Well, I I always assume, but I don’t I don’t want to make the assumption. Apollos is a name that, um you know, depending on your historical background, you might think, oh, this Apollos mission, we’re going to the moon. But it’s actually from the writing of Paul, I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. I just don’t want to miss the connection for what the heartbeat of Apollos is. We firmly believe in the work of what pastors are doing, the the thing that God has called them to. We want to come alongside and water the things that you are planting, pastors.Rich Birch — That’s so good.Tyler Vance — And we trust that God does His work in the midst of that. So I just don’t want to miss that. Rich Birch — No, that’s good. Tyler Vance — As ah as it’s nothing to do with the moon.Rich Birch — Yeah. No, that’s good though. And I appreciate that. That’s, uh, yeah, that’s, I love that. That’s what a, what a, what a vivid picture for sure. Well, you guys make this strong claim about the fact that you believe in strong community and healthy habits, and which is a lot for a technology company. I’d love to take a step back and talk about why it seems more than ever community is like a big deal. Why is that? Why are we facing this need for community? And then, you know, we’ll narrow down into specifically how technology can help with that.Rich Birch — But it just, I think people agree, but kind of unpack that problem for us a little bit.Tyler Vance — Yeah, I think, Rich, I mean, if you go back to and the the first model we have of the early church in Acts, community is the the driver of it, right? And so I think the local church, yes, to empower the gospel, yes, to um to make disciples, but that happens in this context of community. And so you look at the the vision, the picture that that Jesus gives us of the early church, and then you compare it to the statistics that are overwhelming in our society is, you know, this has been coined as the loneliest generation in history.Rich Birch — Yeah.Tyler Vance — And we have the answer, we we have the model for that as the local church… Rich Birch — Right. Right. Tyler Vance — …to be the solution to the largest problem our generation is facing.Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. I was gonna say I love that. I don’t love that we’re the loneliest generation, but I think that’s a good thing for us to point out. A friend of mine, Jeff Brody, says that, ah hey, at the time, at the very moment when the world seems to be the hungriest that it’s been in decades, and I think in generations… Tyler Vance — Yeah. Rich Birch — …for what we do as a church, there are a lot of churches that are kind of turning inward and not, you know, even solving like this, helping to solve problems that are in the real world, which is this idea of, you know of loneliness. How do you think the church is good at that? What is it about ah but what we do that drives community, that makes community work in you know in people’s lives?Tyler Vance — Well, it’s a fabric of ah being a disciple of Jesus, right? Rich Birch — Right.Tyler Vance — It’s confess your sins one to another. It’s it’s it’s this tangible, deeply connected tissue of doing life together, having community that you can be engaged with, that you can grow with, that you can cry with. My wife and I, for example, Rich, we ah live many hours away from our closest family, you know. How many times has our small group been there on Christmases where we got snowed in and we couldn’t be there, right?Rich Birch — So true.Tyler Vance — Where Thanksgivings, the birth of our children, our small group was the first to the hospital because our families were… this is the this is the fabric of the church when done well, when leaned in. And yeah, we have a loneliest generation. That’s that’s a that’s a ah ah title that has been applied to to that, but we have such opportunity to come in and rewrite that story for people.Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so true.Tyler Vance — And and it’s very odd juxtaposition because we are probably the most connected… Rich Birch — Right. Tyler Vance — …generation ever. Rich Birch — Right. Tyler Vance — But those connections aren’t deep in in the things of God. They are not spiritual in nature. And we know intuitively that that they become lacking for what they produce. And so if if there’s ever an institution to be able to solve that is the local church.Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. And then, you know, the other side of of what you’ve talked about, and and I want to get to what Apollos does, but I I wanted to try to lay the framework here a little bit more at kind of a philosophical level. You talk about healthy habits are a necessary ingredient for personal growth. So when when you say that, unpack that a little bit more. I think people would agree with that, but what how how are health, why are healthy habits a critical piece of, you know, a disciple’s journey?Tyler Vance — Yeah, I I mean, so the the healthy habits, what we we would say is our are the daily habits that are core to what we do, and and I will lean in a little bit to to the product of what we do.Rich Birch — Yep. Yeah, that’s good.Tyler Vance — They are ah daily time with God, prayer, and gratitude.Rich Birch — Yep.Tyler Vance — And those aren’t ah those aren’t by accident. We didn’t just you know come up with some great thing. The the history of our of our product is is deeper than 10 years old and it’s built on trying different habits. And so the data overwhelmingly shows that those are the three habits that move the needle most in an individual’s daily spiritual kind of, maybe maybe a different way to phrase it would be their spiritual fitness, or their discipleship, right? And also they become ah leading indicators of weekend attendance, of generosity, of these other things that historically in the church we have counted as the ah the measures of success. Tyler Vance — And so that’s what our data is showing ah in in and that. And so we’re making very data-informed decisions. One of the things we used to say as I led data at Life Church was, um data has a seat at the table, but the Holy Spirit is still the head of the table, right? Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good. Yep.Tyler Vance — And and so like we want to make sure that we’re making data-informed decisions by allowing God still to be the final say in the direction and and the things of what we’re leaning into.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. So um friends, we back it’s about six months ago, we had Lauren from Liquid Church on and and we were talking about their app, Apollos. And she mentioned this on there. Apollos is the provider behind ah what they’re what they’re doing at Liquid. And so we’ll link to that that episode if you want to kind of talk and hear about a specific church’s application of Apollos. There’s a bunch of churches across the country that are benefiting from this. Rich Birch — But um but but let’s let’s unpack those three habits. So ah prayer, scripture reading, gratitude, help help us unpack, what does that look like ah at an app level? And and then and layer on top of that community, because this to me is, I think, a part of what makes what you’re doing so unique, that these are really, they so those seem to be ah woven together in a really beautiful way. So talk us through that.Tyler Vance — Yeah, um so I’ll actually use some stories to illustrate how how this functionality works.Rich Birch — That’s great. Yeah.Tyler Vance — First off, as a pastor, I believe in the power of prayer. And um as ah I was in a situation, an environment where we received prayer cards, like many of probably the pastors that that are listening. And you’d go through and as a staff pray for those prayer cards. And then you know probably most of us would have a prayer team that we give those prayer cards to. And you you know that that would kind of be the it. We wouldn’t be able to hear the final story or follow up. I mean we just we were kind of at the mercy of that being the the end of the story. One of the great things that we found by allowing prayer to happen in an app experience is, first off, it takes about 60 seconds for someone to submit a prayer, and then someone else in the church to respond to that prayer, right?Tyler Vance — So we have cut down the time for the church to really become the church together. We’ve actually empowered this thing to happen that is independent of a pastor, not meaning that a pastor can’t engage in it, but that we’re allowing the church to be the church. And actually Lauren from Liquid shares one of the most powerful stories of this. She was actually on her way to a doctor’s appointment for her kid and shared a prayer in the app. By the time she got to the doctor’s appointment, she had people praying for her.Rich Birch — That’s amazing.Tyler Vance — She got to the doctor’s appointment, had a great appointment. She’s checking her kid in the next weekend. And one of the ladies helping her check her kid in says, hey, I was actually one of the people praying for you this week. A, I want to know how your appointment was. But also, if you didn’t know, I spent 20 years in that very specific field of industry.Rich Birch — Wow. Yeah. Wow. Amazing.Tyler Vance — And I would love to help you out in a very tangible way. Prayer connects the heart of believers together in such a powerful way. And we’re seeing that across the board. Faith Promise Church in Knoxville, their XP shared a story with me of you know a kid, same similar story: parent praying as they go to a doctor’s appointment, kid had a concussion, and they were really looking for how extensive the brain damage was.Tyler Vance — Church surrounds them on their way to the doctor’s appointment in prayer. Ends up no no brain damage. And the the kid says to the doctor, as a three-year-old, I know why you can’t find brain damage because my church is praying for me.Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.Tyler Vance — All of that is not, that’s not from a prayer card on a Sunday to a Sunday. Tyler Vance — That is real time, the church being the church. That’s that’s a power of what we’re seeing when you put prayer in an app. That is the context of your church body.Rich Birch — Yeah, I love I love that. And I um so I’m you know I’m lurking on the Liquid app. I’m you know and I’m you know friends with some folks on there. And it’s amazing how, you know as a user, just as a person on the app using it, like that’ll happen. A friend will come up and a prayer will come up and I’ll stop and pause and pray.Rich Birch — And it doesn’t, you know, and and people are sharing things of you know all different kinds of stuff. And as a as a just a person using this app, it really does draw me in towards them, obviously towards you know what’s what’s going on in their life. So those are vivid examples at kind of the personal level. I remember you you know for years an executive pastor when we would do prayer on a Sunday with prayer cards, we would do exactly that. We would have you know we would take the cards, and we would ensure that they’re getting prayed for by our prayer team. We take that very serious. We’d have, you know, hand them out to people. We would divvy them up and like, we’re going to make that happen. Rich Birch — But then there was another part of this, which was about frankly, looking at data from people in our church and trying to get a sense of what’s happening in their lives to help us as we’re speaking for the future. Is is there an opportunity through Apollos to leverage data in that way, in a way that’s elegant and, you know, non creepy, obviously, but talk to us about that.Tyler Vance — Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Data is a big, a big thing. And I think in my time leading data specifically at Life Church and the whole initiatives around that, I think pastors have the the tendency to want to get what I call data drunk. It means that they want all the data in the world. And they have no clue what to do with it. They just want it.Rich Birch — Right.Tyler Vance — And so to to your point, we want to be very strategic. We have opportunities to provide whatever data you need. But we want to be strategic in the use case, the purpose of it. Not that we can’t get it, but what we really want is we are we are more strategy than we are a product. And…Rich Birch — That’s good.Tyler Vance — …we just really want to help you understand what it is you’re trying to do, what… to to your point, Rich, that such a great example of if I knew what people in my church were praying for, I’d teach differently on the weekend. Yeah. Or I’d create courses or the felt needs, you know, articles or blogs that I’m putting out would would reflect that. Yes, absolutely. We want to equip the church ah in in ways like that. And so absolutely everything is possible there. Tyler Vance — One of the one of the things that um I think I will highlight is just the, since we’re talking about communication cards, the opportunity for profile creation. And a lot of pastors are missing this, and I wish that they understood this more. An app profile creation is the new communication card. And so what we also are trying to do is we’re also trying to give unknown people in your congregations a known voice and entity, right?Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.Tyler Vance — As a pastor, it’s really hard and you stand on stage and you look out and you go, I can identify maybe 20, I know the names of maybe 20% of these people, right? How do we begin, as a church, to know the names of more people? Rich Birch — That’s good. Tyler Vance — And really profile creation in a digital experience is, is a new way to do that, and we need to be looking at digital experiences, ah not just for the digital experience they offer but for the profile creation and the ability to know people – that they exist, that they then we can understand demographics, we can understand who our church is reaching, we can really listen in for the heartbeat of where God is moving in our individual churches instead of, and I’m going to hit a soapbox item for me, instead of trying to predict or create a space for God to move, we can listen to where he’s already moving and just move with him.Rich Birch — That’s “Experiencing God”, Henry Blackaby. That’s great. Where’s God at work? Move towards that. That’s fantastic. Let’s double click on that. When you say profile creation, give us the kind of, give us some free coaching here. We’re taking advantage of the fact that you’re on the call. If you’re thinking of a church that’s you know that wants to ensure that we’re getting, you know, we’re we’re kind of fully taking advantage of this kind of profile creation idea and then management of that. What would be a few of the kind of best practices we should be thinking about on that front?Tyler Vance — Sure. Well, let me let me actually start off with some real-time data here.Rich Birch — Oh, that’s perfect.Tyler Vance — Two two weeks ago, ah we launched a brand new app in a church near Orlando. In that timeframe, in two weeks, they push the app from stage and they did a great marketing strategy around it, and they did a lot of great stuff that was outside of the digital product, right? Rich Birch — Yep. Tyler Vance — And so free coaching number one is a great digital product is not the solution. A comprehensive strategy is the solution.Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. That’s good.Tyler Vance — 20% of their church created a profile. And you think, man, that’s great.Rich Birch — Wow.Tyler Vance — But what is ah what if as a pastor I could tell you through a great strategy, you could know an additional 20% of the names sitting in your auditorium?Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing.Tyler Vance — That’s crazy. And so um the the double click on that is, I mean, you have to have a great place for them to go. We believe at Apollos that our app is world-class and it’s a great place for people to go. But you have to have a great way to get them there. And we don’t think about this enough, but the fact that we believe something’s valuable as a local church doesn’t mean that the people sitting in our seats think it’s valuable. So we always have to be customer-centric, right?Rich Birch — That’s so true. Yeah, that’s so true.Tyler Vance — And and that we miss that as pastors. I know you you laugh at that, but um we we so oftentimes miss that as pastors because we are used to developing the strategy, creating the vision, doing the weekend message, and people show up for it.Tyler Vance — And we now live in a society where there has to be a branded value. There has to be some reason why I would want to engage in that.Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.Tyler Vance — And it has to be customer-focused and customer is not like the the sexy thing to say when we’re talking about church and it’s a different way to say it, but we need to be customer-focused.Rich Birch — Yeah, okay, so yeah, you’ve hit on a, I would say as, again, an observer, someone who’s been in this space, I feel like there’s a lot of, and you’re not talking down about other apps. So this is me saying this, not you. But I feel like there’s a lot of churches out there that have apps that really are just a shortcut to their revenue. They’re like a, you know, it’s ah it’s essentially just a wrapper around a webpage that says, please give us money. And there isn’t really any other reason for people to use the app. And so then we roll this thing out thinking, oh, like, you know, everyone’s going to want to do this. This will be so easy. Well, no, like that isn’t what happens. And there’ll be, there’s low adoption rates. But it seems like to me, Apollos’ focus on these daily habits, bringing people back time and again, for things that actually help them… Tyler Vance — Yeah. Rich Birch — …man, that’s like beneficial for us as a church. It’s we’re seeing more as a platform than just like, ah it’s not just one more thing to kind of bother them in their in their lives. Is that Is that kind of the strategy behind it from it from a church and from a you know user point of view, from from your point of view?Tyler Vance — Absolutely, Rich. And and I I will I will say this and I will say it sensitively. There are a lot of strategies that are solely based on content distribution. And that’s great, but everywhere else in our society, you have content distribution wrapped in community, right? And and the local church has not embraced that to the level that the rest of the world has. And so we really aim to do that. And and to go back to some feature set… Rich Birch — Yep.Tyler Vance — …and not to highlight feature set, but to highlight strategy here, we talk about communities. One of the things that we’re seeing in communities is, you know, five years ago, we might have put a felt needs article on our website and understood that that might get someone to engage. We’re seeing incredible traction from taking those felt needs articles and creating short-term experiences and groups around them.Tyler Vance — An example of this… Rich Birch — Yeah. Rich Birch — …a church in Dallas ah did a 21 days to a better marriage, right?Rich Birch — Yeah, wonderful.Tyler Vance — $100 Facebook ad spend, ah sign up of like 980 people,Rich Birch — Wow.Tyler Vance — 23% of those people had never walked in the door of their church.Rich Birch — Wow. That’s amazing.Tyler Vance — And they stuck around for 21 days. So we track that over the course, 12 months later, 17% of those people were still engaged with their church, of of the new.Rich Birch — Wow, that’s amazing.Tyler Vance — It’s incredibly sticky because they offered something that no one else offered, and it wasn’t just content… Rich Birch — It’s community. Tyler Vance — …it was community around content.Rich Birch — Well and that I think is a good insight that we that I think a lot of churches haven’t embraced. We know that intuitively that it’s not the content, that content’s a core a core part of what we do on the weekend, say, in our in-person experiences. It’s critical to what we do. You’ve got to have great preaching. You have to actually say something. But it’s a it’s a community-rich experience. The reason why people come back, the reason why they join teams, the reason why they connect in small groups is because of the relationships.Rich Birch — But it’s like we get online and we forget that. We forgot that you know that that port that part of what we do um which is you know… And then we’re just like, how come we we we look at it like a giant megaphone. Let’s just keep broadcasting. And we’re all screaming online as opposed to saying, hey, let’s try to create a community around that. That’s powerful. Tyler Vance — Yeah.Rich Birch — Did they, so are you saying in this example from Dallas with the 21 day kind of marriage tune up or whatever, did that drive ultimately to their website, to their app? How did that all work? How did, like, what, what did that look like?Tyler Vance — It was all experienced through their app. It was an app-driven experience. So…Rich Birch — Wow. Okay.Tyler Vance — I mean, in order to to get into that, their their app is set up to where you had to create a profile, you had to log in.Rich Birch — Yep.Tyler Vance — That’s how we knew to go back to your data point of these were new people. The next 20%, this is what I didn’t share, the next 20% were people that were sitting in the seats, but had never done anything in their church.Rich Birch — Right, right.Tyler Vance — Right?Rich Birch — Disengaged. Yep.Tyler Vance — And so the it just became this incredible experience. And actually, Rich, to go back to your point, this isn’t new.Rich Birch — Right.Tyler Vance — Like to to to To your Henry Blackaby nod earlier, the church has been doing this since I’ve been alive, right? We’ve been connecting people around needs in small groups, but we’ve been asking them to come to buildings. And we’re really comfortable still asking them to come to buildings. And all we’re doing is taking those similar experiences that we know to be ah integral to a discipleship journey. And we’re saying you can do them asynchronously via your phone and still have the same level of discipleship and community.Rich Birch — Yeah. Okay. Let’s talk a little bit about the, from my perspective, the fit and finish of what Apollos does is industry leading. It’s ah fantastic. Your apps are, they’re snappy. You push a button and it actually works. Like, which should not be the benchmark for apps, but you’d be amazed. Rich Birch — I was joking with another member of your team where I was, I do these visits where I did 22 of them last year, where I’ll be on site at the church and where they’re Sunday, Monday, and we’re looking at stuff and trying to help them, I’m trying to help them find some actionable insights, things that they could apply. Rich Birch — And I was standing in the lobby at this church, large church, 10,000 plus person church, and they were trying to check their the person who I was with, who’s on staff, was trying to check their kid in to their kid’s thing and they were doing it through their app and like the app was totally broken, did not work. It was not an Apollos app – don’t worry. You know and the and they were joking and they didn’t know that I you know was thinking about these things. They were like, oh yeah, that just happens all the time. like it’s just It’s a piece of junk. And and they just kind of were resolved to like, that’s the way it’s like, that’s just the way it is. It just is like it’s broken. It’s always broken. That’s the way it is. Rich Birch — How are you ensuring at Apollos that you’re keeping on top of, you know, the fit and finish side of this, that this feel like your app’s—and that’s like kind of a weird question, because it’s like a broad… “how do you be good” is kind of the question. But what are you doing to ensure that the app continues to perform? Because to me, that seems like a differentiator as a person looking in at what you do.Tyler Vance — Yeah, ah well, um I would say strategically, we are we are a scalpel. And so from leading technology within the local church, I would say one of the hardest jobs I had to do was say no to good ideas. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. That’s good. Tyler Vance — Right? And we, I mean, gosh, how many leadership talks have been on that concept? But when we when it comes to technology, it seems like we lose that perspective that if if it’s an app, if it can be done digitally, it should be done digitally. And it’s like, no, we actually, not everything in your church needs to reside on that.Rich Birch — That’s good.Tyler Vance — That is a lack of strategy. We wanna bring strategy to the why and the what. Rich Birch — That’s good. Tyler Vance — From a really tangible standpoint, Apollos is a white label app, meaning when you buy Apollos, you get a whole team of developers behind you, supporting you. We brand it like your app. No one in your church will ever know Apollos exists. It is your church app, but you have a world-class team behind you that is making sure everything works great. We’re building new features. We’re listening to community. We’re we’re doing everything behind the scenes for you.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. Well, this has been a fascinating conversation. When you kind of think to the future, so give us a kind of a poke up over the horizon. One of the things I’ve noticed is it seems to be the churches that are benefiting from Apollos, it’s not like a tack on, it’s not like a bolted on kind of thing. They’re trying to figure out how to um make it central to their experience. Rich Birch — The example I’ve used in other contexts has been, I still like Starbucks. And I like the Starbucks app. It doesn’t, but I don’t get coffee from the Starbucks app. I don’t press a button and coffee comes out. The Starbucks app helps my Starbucks experience be better. It seems like the churches that are using Apollos or are leveraging it are thinking about it in the same way. It’s not just like this we, you know, we’re, we’re a church and then, oh yeah, we also have this app thing. They’re trying to find ways to integrate it. Rich Birch — How are churches doing a good job of that? What would be and maybe another example or two of that? And then what does the future look like? How where is the kind of future up over the horizon with Apollos look like you know as you as you dream a little bit about the future? Obviously knowing things change.Tyler Vance — Well, first off, the higher level strategy decision-maker you can get that’s thinking about all of the things, the the better you get. What what we find on a lot of churches is the technology gets buried at best three or four layers deep in decision-making, right?Rich Birch — No, that’s good. Yeah.Tyler Vance — So by the time you’ve planned your weekend sermon, and you’ve got your production team and your marketing team, and then someone underneath them, two or three layers is thinking about, oh, we should probably also blank with the app. And so the higher up you can you can get that decision making. The concept, and we say this as like a tagline, but seven days not just Sundays. Rich Birch — That’s good. Tyler Vance — The senior pastors and the the executive pastors that understand I have the ability to have 10x the number of touch points. They they get it. And so that that’s one thing. Rich Birch — That’s good.Tyler Vance — Leaning into a future, golly, Rich, it is so ripe. The harvest is plentiful, um is what I would say.Rich Birch — So true.Tyler Vance — And and digital um is never a replacement for in-person church experiences. And so the better we get at creating digital experiences…Rich Birch — Yeah, so true.Tyler Vance — …that pull people to in-person, I think the more we win. Rich Birch — Yeah.Tyler Vance — And so if if that is not our aim from day one, I think we fail. We want to see the local church grow. I want to see my church adding services. I want to see my church you know growing exponentially, but I understand that digital is a tool to make that happen.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Well, friends, I really strongly recommend, highly endorse your ah reaching out to Apollos and connecting. Maybe you’ve got an app that’s not working well. Maybe this is an area that you’ve been thinking about, hey, we got to take some new steps. I would strongly recommend that you need to take some steps toward them. You know, it’s interesting because You talk to pastors and we all know that the phone in the grand scheme of things has done a lot of not great things in people’s lives. Like we, you know, we see that, we see that. But a part of what I love about Apollos is again, you may not like it that I refer to it like this, but I’ve said this behind your back. I’m like, I feel like you guys are like the Robin Hood of the technology world. You’re like taking the riches of all these, like, “how do you engage people” that we know lots of other apps do that, and they’re they’re trying to mine money out of that. They’re trying to mine, you know, they’re they’re taking my attention and turning it into cash, where you’re using the same kind of learnings, but you’re trying to use that ultimately to drive a deeper community connection with my church, trying to drive a deeper prayer life, scripture reading, gratitude, man, like that’s all amazing. Like, I just think that’s incredible.Rich Birch — So as we wrap up, kind of final thoughts you know that you’d say before we wrap up today’s conversation?Tyler Vance — Man, Rich, thank you for the conversation. Anytime we have a chance to to reshape or just to continue the conversation around what does digital need to look like versus what it has looked like, and we’re game. And so thank you for the opportunity to come and and you’ve been gracious with that. I appreciate it.Rich Birch — Yeah. Nice. If people want to track with you or with Apollos, where do we want to send them online? Where’s the best place to send them?Tyler Vance — Yeah, you can go to apollos.app. You can find us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram. You can find me @atylervance and I’m I’m out there as well and love to connect with you. Love to hear the stories of what God is doing. We also want to learn. You know, if you have something that’s working really well, ah share it because we are big “C” Church people and we want to make sure other people know it too.Rich Birch — That’s great. Thanks so much, man. I appreciate you being here today.Tyler Vance — Thank you, Rich.

Rick and Patti Love, co-founders of Love New Canadians and Love New Internationals, share their passion for immigrant ministry. They discuss a three-stage model that emphasizes building friendships before spiritual engagement. The Loves encourage churches to understand demographics and foster connections through community initiatives. They highlight innovative programs like 'Project Confidence' aimed at enhancing English skills and boosting self-esteem. By creating structured pathways and cultural events, churches can effectively welcome and serve immigrants in their neighborhoods.

Chad Bickley, Executive Pastor at Skyline Church, shares his expertise on cultivating a thriving staff culture in a growing church. He discusses the critical need to hire the right people and maintain team alignment with the church's vision. Bickley highlights six core behaviors—attitude, commitment, work ethic, accountability, trust, and love—that are essential for team cohesion. He also emphasizes the importance of communication and connection in building a healthy organizational culture, ensuring the staff remains focused and productive as the church expands.

Thanks for tuning in to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Danny Anderson, the Lead Pastor at Emmanuel Church in Indianapolis, Indiana. Is your church growing quickly, but you’re feeling the pressure? Wondering how to balance church growth with spiritual health for yourself and your staff team? Danny shares his journey of leading a fast-growing church while maintaining soul care and healthy leadership practices. Give people time to grieve. // Danny joined Emmanuel Church as a high school pastor in 1999. In 2006 he transitioned into the lead pastor role following the retirement of the founding pastor. Danny was eager to cast a fresh vision and implement changes in order to reach more people. However, he didn’t initially recognize that people needed time to grieve the departure of their previous pastor. This led to a challenging transition and attendance dropped significantly within the first 18 months. Honor the past while casting vision for the future. // Honor the past when transitioning leadership. People need time to adopt a new vision and accept the coming changes. Clear, unwavering vision needs to come from the lead pastor, however, when formulating a new vision, look at who Jesus spent time with and why He came. The pressures of growth. // As people at Emmanuel bought into the vision of reaching people far from God, they began inviting friends and the church regained momentum. Since then, they have continued to expand, opening a new campus nearly every other year. However, with growth can come pressure. It’s not uncommon for pastors to experience either burnout or moral failure amidst fast growth. But Danny emphasizes that this is not inevitable for leaders—provided they actively care for their souls. Take care of your own soul and faith. // The most important job of a leader is to take care of their soul. Effective leadership begins with the senior leader doing the work to care for their soul and follow Jesus well. Danny wakes up every morning and incorporates daily routines such as scripture reading, prayer, confession, and journaling to maintain his spiritual health and stay grounded and aligned with Jesus. Keep your mind in the right spot. // The mind controls how we think and feel, and our soul relies on how we feel. The way we feel will shape the way we act. In order to make godly choices and live a righteous life, we need to fill our minds with scripture and be thinking correctly. By making sure our minds are in a good spot, we make sure our souls are too. Be the example. // When it comes to staff health, everything starts with the senior leader. A leader’s demeanor and attitude will shape the church culture. Danny challenges his staff to care for their souls, whether it’s in staff meetings or in practices the church implements. For example, at Emmanuel they prioritize the spiritual well-being of the team by instituting a strict Sabbath policy where no one is allowed to work on Fridays. This practice underscores the belief that the health of the soul is more important than church productivity. A pastor needs to follow the same challenges they give to their people, thereby setting an example for them. Balance the key issues in your life. // Danny’s book Church Growth Unleashed: How to Grow Your Church Without Losing Your Soul was written to help church leaders grow a healthy, thriving congregation without sacrificing their churches, families, or health. Often failure at a church is not because of the size of the church but because a pastor didn’t care for their soul. The book talks about key issues in a church leader’s life that help provide balance, such as how their physical health helps them serve and lead, and the importance of having friends that a pastor can be vulnerable with. Find Emmanuel Church at eclife.org and explore both the Church Growth Unleashed podcast and book. Plus, find Danny on Instagram @DannyAnderson23. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live! Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Super excited for today’s conversation. Really looking forward to this because this every time I interact with this leader, it feels like a kindred spirit. You’re going to love this conversation. You want to lean in carefully because we’ve got lessons both for your church and for you as an individual.Rich Birch — Today we’re talking with Pastor Danny Anderson. He is the lead pastor at a church that you should be following, Emmanuel Church, ah it which which was established in 1977. It’s a multisite church with, I think if I’m counting correctly, seven campuses in Indianapolis, an online campus, and a number of ah microsites. It’s repeatedly on one of the fastest growing church lists in the country. Danny’s been a lead pastor there since 2006. He also served as the high school pastor, which we all know the best people come up, from Student Ministry. Has got a podcast as well, so I know his audio is going to be good. Welcome to the show. So glad you’re here, Danny.Danny Anderson — Thanks, Rich. Appreciate you having me. What a privilege.Rich Birch — Yeah, this. Oh, come on. So our honor. Glad you’re here. Why don’t you fill in the picture? Kind of tell us a little bit about about you, about the church, that that sort of thing.Danny Anderson — Yeah, so ah I graduated from Liberty University in ’99 and actually interviewed with Emmanuel Church coming out of college… Rich Birch — Nice. Danny Anderson — …because it was my wife’s home church. Rich Birch — Oh, nice. Danny Anderson — And they they were like, hey, who’s this guy? Maybe maybe he’ll be a good high school pastor.Rich Birch — Nice.Danny Anderson — And did the interview process, got the job. And yeah, did did youth ministry for five years, loved it. And then my found our founding pastor ah decided to ah pursue enter into retirement in 2006 and kind of tapped me on the shoulder. Church voted me in. Rich Birch — Nice. Danny Anderson — And the wild ride of senior leadership began in 2006. Rich Birch — That’s so good. Danny Anderson — And it went smoothly. Rich Birch — Yeah, no problems at all. Easy, easy. Well, actually, why don’t you give us a bit of some of the milestones along the way? When you look back, here we are, 2025, you know, coming up on 20 years, that’s a long time, ah which is wonderful. Give us some of those milestones that kind of are, have been key and when you look back over these years.Danny Anderson — Well, I’ll tell you what, the first year and a half was incredibly difficult, you know taking over for a founding pastor. Pastoral transitions are tough anyway, but when you when you transition after a founding pastor ah who’s beloved, um adored by the people, it was really tough. I had some people tell me, look, I don’t care if you were Andy Stanley, this would not have gone any better.Rich Birch — Right, right. Yes, yeah.Danny Anderson — But so it was it was tough. I like to say that I successfully led the church from 2000 to 900 in about a year and a half. Rich Birch — Okay yes. Danny Anderson — And so it was it was very difficult, very challenging. So a big milestone was in two thousand ah late 2007, 2008, people started to bring their friends. And I remember I remember it vividly. People started to get saved. I was casting vision. I was trying to stop the bleeding. And then people started to believe the message that, hey, we’re here to reach people who are far from God. Like the church exists to see people who are far from Christ you know come to to know Him and grow in a relationship with Him.Danny Anderson — And those who chose to stay under my leadership began to invite their friends and people got saved, started to get baptized. And yeah moving into 2010, we were so packed that we had to start a Saturday night service. That was a big milestone for us.Rich Birch — Well, that’s a huge deal. Yeah. Yeah.Danny Anderson — You know, launching that, we’re like, man, we’re out of space. What do we do?Rich Birch — Right.Danny Anderson — And then moving into 2013, we launched our first campus, and that ah was about a 500-person solution, you know? Rich Birch — Wow. Yeah. Danny Anderson — We sent out 500 people, and ah that church is is doing wonderful. They just celebrated 10 years um ah and into in 2023.Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s amazing.Danny Anderson — And since then, we’ve kind of launched one campus every other year or so, and and… Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s great. Danny Anderson — …and it’s it’s just been um you know an incredible journey.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing. I love to kind of double click on something. You talked about casting vision. That’s a unique challenge coming in after the founding. I know the stats on the guy that comes in after the founding pastor, not great. You know, like I don’t want to discourage anybody that’s listening in, but it’s like lots of times those guys last about 18 months. Danny Anderson — Yeah. Rich Birch — But you were able to cast a new vision, interestingly, at that same kind of timeframe, 18 months, two years in, you’ve got to clarify. What was going through your head in that moment around clarity of vision, you know, kind of because there’s ah a balance there of like casting a new vision, but then, but you also don’t want to trample on the past and all that. You want to build on where we get, what would, how, how did you cast a vision in that season and how did that impact the church?Danny Anderson — Well, I I definitely was naive and some of that played to my advantage and some of that hurt me.Rich Birch — Yeah. Right.Danny Anderson — I could have done a much better job honoring the past. And if there’s anybody out there listening and thinking about transitioning or in a transition, it’s very important for the person coming in behind the pastor, especially the founding pastor, just to honor honor the past, honor where you’ve been. I kind of jumped past that um and I was so excited. I was eager. I was 26 years old and I wanted to talk about the future. I wanted to talk about how we are going to do things differently to reach people who are far from God. And so I started canceling programs. I changed the music. I did all these things that I had heard others did to reach the next generation.Rich Birch — Yes.Danny Anderson — And that that was fairly easy to talk about. We did a series about it. I talked about it. But what I didn’t understand because I was so young is that people were not ready to receive that vision yet. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Danny Anderson — They were still um grieving the loss of their founding pastor, still not sure whether or not they should buy into my leadership.Rich Birch — Yep/Danny Anderson — I didn’t really understand the law of buy-in… Rich Birch — Yes. Danny Anderson — …you know, ah by John Maxwell.Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.Danny Anderson — And I just got, I went right into vision. Rich Birch — Yes.Danny Anderson — And so we paid the price for that. It it really hurt us. But in the long run, those who did choose to stay bought into that vision. But you know the I guess the question you asked me was, how did I maybe formulate that vision?Rich Birch — Yeah.Danny Anderson — You know for for me for me, it was just the New Testament just reading like, who did Jesus spend time with? What was this heart? Why did he come? You know I was radically saved in high school as a 17-year-old kid. I was not a church kid. My life was totally revolutionized, did a 180. So when I put my faith in Christ, it was it was because I knew he forgave me. I knew he was real. I didn’t really care about church. I just loved Jesus, you know?Rich Birch — Good.Danny Anderson — And I just, I wanted, I want people to experience that.Danny Anderson — And and so my vision was, hey, let’s let’s be a church that reaches people who really need hope. They really need meaning. They need purpose. They need forgiveness. They need grace, all these wonderful things that I had received. And that only made sense to me. Like, why why else would we do church?Rich Birch — Right. Right. Yeah, yeah for sure. Well, but it’s interesting, right? Like I think a lot of times I know as a person that sat in that kind of executive pastor second chair, I know a part of what I’ve tried to do over the years is encourage the lead pastors I’ve served for to to continue to clarify the vision. And a lot of it like that, that’s a thing that a lead pastor can’t outsource. We can’t be like, we can’t pull 25 people in a room and go, So why do we think we should exist? Like no, no, like you’ve you got to feel it at in your bones. like It’s like, hey, this is I’m willing to drive the and the bus over the cliff over this issue. And that ultimately is what gathers people. And and yeah, that’s that’s good Rich Birch — Okay, so pivoting in a slightly different direction. So you’re coming up you know two decades, almost two decades as in in this lead role. That’s amazing. Incredible. Congratulations on that.Danny Anderson — Thank you.Rich Birch — You know, we often see that, you know, churches of a certain size. One of the kind of common characteristics is you’ve got leaders that are in their second, third decade there that that’s normal. It is not typical that it like happens overnight. It takes time. But one of the downsides, the negative kind of tragic realities is many parents experience or parents, pastors experience either burnout or moral failure amidst the kind of growth that your church has seen.Rich Birch — You know, can we explore that a little bit? Talk about kind of your own personal reflections on how do you navigate that? How do you kind of keep your soul connected to Jesus in the midst of that?Danny Anderson — That’s a great question. You know, one ah one of the things that really broke my heart several years ago, and I think many pastors were brokenhearted over seeing some of their heroes and of the faith, the church leaders that they’ve followed for years, looked up to, gone to their conferences.Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s true.Danny Anderson — You know, we’ve all watched some of these guys kind of shipwreck their their church for, you know, ah moral reasons, power struggles. And, you know, I I’m watching this happen, as as everyone else is, and I’m like, man, is it inevitable that this is going to happen to me?Rich Birch — Right. Right.Danny Anderson — You know, because I’m I’m I’m on the same path these guys are on.Rich Birch — Right.Danny Anderson — I’m trying to grow the church. Things are happening. And we’re launching campuses. You knowis it inevitable that I’m going to have an affair or or or do something stupid with money or abuse power?Rich Birch — Right.Danny Anderson — And and I got to thinking about that. And I was like, no, that’s not inevitable.Rich Birch — Good.Danny Anderson — And and the reason why it’s not inevitable for me or for any pastor out there is that if you do the proper work on your soul, which is the most important thing that we can do, you know, the Proverbs 4:23 says, guard your heart above all else because out of it flow the issues of life, right? Like everything we do, our leadership, our sermons, the way we lead our team, it all comes from our heart.Rich Birch — Right.Danny Anderson — So the most important, I’m convinced, the most and important job of a leader is to take care of their soul.Rich Birch — Right. Good.Danny Anderson — Because if my soul is healthy… Rich Birch — Yep. Danny Anderson — …and it’s aligned with Jesus and it’s surrendered to his will, like then I can lead well. And I won’t shipwreck my faith, and I won’t fall into temptation.Rich Birch — Right.Danny Anderson — I’m not talking about perfection. Nobody’s going to be perfect. Rich Birch — No. Yeah, yeah. Danny Anderson — I’m talking about patterns of sin that will destroy your church, destroy your minister, and disqualify you from leading.Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah. 100%.Danny Anderson — And so I spend a ton of time, Rich, working on myself. I did it again this morning. I wake up every morning at 5.30. I have a whole routine I go through. And it’s it’s it involves the scriptures, surrender, prayer, confession, journaling, um reading other books. And and I do that, not because I’m a pastor, but because I want but because I want to take care of my soul. I want to have a healthy soul.Rich Birch — Yes, that’s good.Danny Anderson — And so I have practices and rhythms that I keep to make sure that I maintain that in the midst of the chaos of leading our church, which there’s never a dull moment, as you know, leading a church, it’s it’s crazy.Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes. Yes.Danny Anderson — But so yeah, I’m I’m hyper focused on that.Rich Birch — Yeah, I’d love to talk a little bit more about that, kind of drilling, because one of the I appreciate the way you framed that. Because one of the realities of it is like all the people who that you’re thinking of that have shipwrecked their ministries, shipwrecked their lives, they all would have said that they would have said no, I’ve got practices. I’ve got you know and that’s the sad reality here right? And then there is this cynicism I think for me one of the most corrosive parts of this is there’s a cynicism against large churches. And to me that that’s like that’s like gets to you know effectiveness of the gospel kind of stuff then we’re like well we should just keep all our churches small and that’s the answer. But that isn’t the answer. Rich Birch — We need to be able to lead large churches that are having huge impacts on our community and keep our soul healthy at the same time. So is there one of those practices that maybe it’s like, Hey, I’ve never heard people talk about this. Or like, it seems like a different thing or like this is particularly, has been particularly effective for me or helpful for me, or as I’ve shared with other pastors, they’ve resonated been like, Oh, that’s, that’s different. I I appreciate that. That that’s really helpful for me.Danny Anderson — Yeah, you know, I think the most effective thing that I have practiced or put into my life in terms of a discipline that cares for the soul is, and this has been talked about, so it’s not it’s not fresh.Rich Birch — Yes. Yep.Danny Anderson — It’s just a matter of, are we doing it?Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. True. Yep.Danny Anderson — You know, I hear I hear pastors say this all the time. You know, I I have practices, okay, but are you really doing it?Rich Birch — Right.Danny Anderson — And so here’s here’s here’s how I would explain it. I would explain it um it’s it’s the practice of meditation. And and and I don’t I don’t mean the Eastern type of meditation way emptying yourself and emptying your mind.Rich Birch — Yep.Danny Anderson — I’m talking about filling your mind with Scripture… Rich Birch — That’s good. Yep. Danny Anderson — …to the point where, like in Psalm 1, it says that with that the man of God meditates on it day and night. Rich Birch — That’s good.Danny Anderson — In Joshua 1:8, you know, we meditate upon your law day and night. Is that really true about us? Because here’s how, you know, Dallas Willard and and and many others have explained the way the soul is wired. And I don’t want to go too deep here, but we do have to kind of go deep a little bit. Like the mind controls, predominantly, for the most part, how we feel, like we think and then we feel. And then the will or the place of action at the center of our soul is dependent upon how we’re feeling and how we’re thinking.Rich Birch — That’s good. Yep.Danny Anderson — So if I want to make proper choices, godly choices, live a righteous life, or treat my staff well, or have patience with my assistant, or whatever, then I have to be thinking correctly.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.Danny Anderson — My mind has got to be in the right place, which is why the Apostle Paul says, you know, set your mind on things above, not on things on earth, right? That we’re transformed by the renewing of our mind. We can we’ve preached sermons like that, right? But do we live that way? Where’s our mind?Rich Birch — Yep. Right. Danny Anderson — Every single day? Rich Birch — Yeah. Danny Anderson — Like not just not just at certain times when we’re preparing a sermon or or something, but like throughout the day, are we actually thinking Scripture? Rich Birch — Yeah that’s good. Danny Anderson — Because if we are, then that’s going to be shaping the way we feel… Rich Birch — Yeah that’s good. Danny Anderson — …and then the way we feel is going to shape the way we act. And so I teach that, I try to live that out. And that’s how that’s the primary practice of of tending for my soul. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Danny Anderson — So if I want my soul to be in a good good spot, I got to make sure my mind is in a good spot.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I like I like even how you frame that there around I’ve got to be thinking scripture. And and that’s even a good benchmark for me that got me thinking, okay, so when I go to solve a problem, something that comes up today, is the first thing that comes to mind scripture or is the first thing that comes to mind some book I read, or some podcast I listen to? Is it, you know, and that’s I’m not saying that there’s not ah good things to come from podcasts, obviously, but you know but but what is the knee-jerk reaction of my mind? Is it, am I brought back to the teaching of Jesus ultimately? That’s good. I really like that.Danny Anderson — So let me push in a little bit more on that one thought. You know Dallas Willard teaches this, and and if your listeners haven’t dove in to Dallas’ stuff, I would strongly encourage them to do so. “Renovation of the Heart”, “Divine Conspiracy”, “Spirit of the Disciplines”, “The Great Omission”, all fantastic stuff. But what he actually teaches about scripture, scripture memorization, and the power of it is that as we’re meditating on scripture through the day, we actually interpret life through the lens of the scripture.Rich Birch — That’s good.Danny Anderson — So so it’s like the scriptures are like the lens that we’re looking through as we’re leading our team or we’re talking with our spouse.Rich Birch — That’s good.Danny Anderson — And so we’re interpreting the events of life through scripture. And if we’re doing that, then we’re actually thinking the thoughts of Jesus. And you know as Dallas has said in his books that spiritual maturity is being able to act the way Jesus would act if he were in your place, right? So if I want to do that, I have to think the way Jesus thinks… Rich Birch — Right. That’s good. Danny Anderson — …if I want to live the way he lived, and that ah one idea has changed my leadership and has changed my life.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. So good. Well, then extending that out kind of beyond you to your team, I’ve had a little bit of interaction with some of the Emmanuel team. And, you know, there, if I can just kind of say the thing that some people are thinking is oftentimes, you know, the teams in large churches, it’s like, man, they’re burnt out, they’re struggling. And it’s like, that’s fine for the lead person. They got it all sorted out, but like the team is in a bad spot. Rich Birch — But that hasn’t been my impression of the Emmanuel team. It’s like, well, these people are healthy and they seem to be leaning in. And so how have you been able to navigate the challenges of both scaling? Because you seem like an ambitious church. It seems like, hey, we want to take some ground, but at the same time, balance out health of your staff.Danny Anderson — Yeah, so I have to live it out that everything starts with the senior leader, right? So I talk about this stuff at staff meeting. I challenge my team to do this stuff. We incorporate the Sabbath very aggressively here at the church.Rich Birch — That’s good.Danny Anderson — So nobody’s allowed to work on Friday. And that is a very that’s huge. Rich Birch — Right. Danny Anderson — Like, hey, this that communicates that your soul is more important to me and to God than getting results at this church.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.Danny Anderson — So you will you are not allowed to work on Friday. Rich Birch — Right. Yeah. Danny Anderson — Like it is a rule unless somebody has died or something, you know. Rich Birch — Right, right. Danny Anderson — So, you know people know I’m serious about it. And they know that I care more about their soul than I do about the work that’s actually happening. Now, that does not mean we don’t care about the work that’s happening around here.Rich Birch — Yes.Danny Anderson — We want to launch one campus a year for the next 12 years. Rich Birch — Right.Danny Anderson — We’re very ambitious. um So I think it’s ah it’s this balance. Like what are you talking about in staff meeting? And what does your staff see from you? Like if my staff sees me walking around the office, and I’m barking out orders, and I’ ‘m they could see my face is frustrated, or I’m upset, you know what is that saying? Like there’s some pastors that lead their church that way.Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s true.Danny Anderson — They lead their church through anger…Rich Birch — Yeah.Danny Anderson — … and their face. And everyone’s like, oh, well, look at his face. He’s upset. What’s pastor do… Like, that is not the way Jesus led, you know? Rich Birch — No, it’s true. Danny Anderson — So the the so everyone’s really watching my tone of voice. They’re watching my facial expression. Is he upset? You know, is he calm? Is he poised? And so that stuff all goes back to my personal disciplines of meditation and quiet time and prayer and weekly Sabbath. And and so it starts with me and you have to push that down, those values down into your staff. Rich Birch — Right. Danny Anderson — And give them the space to practice those things that you’re telling them to practice.Rich Birch — Right. And there there’s a key there around, you know, when I’ve been around healthy leaders, have worked with healthy leaders, there’s something about you talking about it that then creates, and living it out, and like, like you’re saying, is even simple things as crazy as it sounds like, Hey, we’re not going to work on one day a week. Friday’s the sabbath day. Uh, like even something as simple as that, talking about it enough so that your team will hold you accountable. Like they’ll come back. If you talk about that enough, they’re going to be like, well, wait a second, Danny. Like you said, we’re not supposed to work Fridays, but why is it that you keep sending me the slides Friday morning at 9:30 in the morning to be done for the weekend?Danny Anderson — Yeah.Rich Birch — I can’t do what you want me to do. And so, yeah, that’s good. I love that. So, so good. Rich Birch — Well, I’d love to pivot it in another direction. So you’ve got a book that came out last year and you’ve got a podcast by the same same name, Church Growth Unleashed: How to Grow Your Church Without Losing Your Soul. We’ve obviously been talking about some of these issues today, but this is a huge task, putting together a book. You know, tell us, kind of why why did you drive towards that? What what are you hoping to get out of this? Who are you thinking about as you pulled this book together?Danny Anderson — Yeah, I’m thinking about the the the pastor who has the passion to see lost people enter the kingdom, but today you’re being told that, you know, big churches are bad… Rich Birch — Yeah. 100%. Danny Anderson — …and you shouldn’t want to grow your church. And I’m like, man, I almost fell prey to that, Rich. Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. Danny Anderson — Like, I really I actually picked up one of those books that had that message in it.Rich Birch — Yep.Danny Anderson — And I’m like, man, maybe we should stay small. Rich Birch — Right. Danny Anderson — Maybe we should just be be content with what we have and the people that we have. And it’s like, I felt guilty about about my ambition.Rich Birch — Yeah. Yes.Danny Anderson — And then I’m like looking at the apostle Paul and the gospel and he’s like, man, let’s go reach the world.Rich Birch — Let’s go. Yeah, yeah.Danny Anderson — And he’s ambitious to to preach and plant churches where no one’s heard the gospel. Rich Birch — Yep.Danny Anderson — And and I’m like, man, this God’s heart, is to reach lost people – lots of them, millions of them.Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.Danny Anderson — And so I wrote this book to help pastors strike the balance of, okay, I know I want to reach people. I want to fan that flame, right? Yes, that is God’s heart. For God so loved the world, He gave His one and only Son, right? But also on the other hand, if you don’t do that in a wise way, you’re going to end up like some of these other guys.Rich Birch — It’s true. Yep.Danny Anderson — And you’re not just going to lose your church, you’re going to lose your family. You could lose your health, your your physical healthRich Birch — Yep. Yep. YepDanny Anderson — …because you overdo it and you over you become a ah workaholic. And and so there is a balance.Rich Birch — Yep.Danny Anderson — And I feel like I haven’t always gotten that right, but man, I sure have tried. Because I want to make it to the end, Rich. I’m 47. I want to go all the way to the end… Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. Danny Anderson — …hand this church off to somebody else in a healthy way and still have a family and a healthy heart. And um and and set this church up to reach the even the next generation. Rich Birch — Right. Danny Anderson — So I’m passionate about you know helping pastors to find that path.Rich Birch — Well, I know, I you know, I love that you said church growth right in the title, because as a fellow author with a book with the title, with church growth in the title, that’s like it that’s like a dangerous decision in some circles.Danny Anderson — Right.Rich Birch — They’re like, well, church growth, isn’t that like guys in the 80s that got like tapes and they’re you know they’re like old, dodgy you know kind of a little bit like you know slick salesman kind of thing. So I love that you did that. I love I love that you did that. I love your heart both to balance the issues around, hey we want to reach people. I agree with you. I think there is this dangerous um, it sounds good. It sounds like even like noble to be like, well, we should keep small. We should, you know, we should play small and like, I’m only going to reach the people on my street. And we’re we’re going to stay under a couple hundred people. And that’s like what God has called us to. Why do you think that is such a pervasive idea? Why why has that become such a pervasive idea in the church?Danny Anderson — Well, I think I think part of it is, it’s a great question, but i think I think a big part of it is that when people see these mega church pastors screw up… Rich Birch — Yeah. Danny Anderson — …whether it is because some sexual sin… Rich Birch — Right. Danny Anderson — …or they have abused power or something… Rich Birch — Right. Danny Anderson — …they immediately make the connection that, see, the problem is not his, the problem is not his soul. The problem is that the church is too big.Rich Birch — Right. Right.Danny Anderson — And so churches are not designed to be that big. And so that, and I just don’t believe that.Rich Birch — Right. Right.Danny Anderson — I do not believe the problem is the size of the church. Rich Birch — Right.Danny Anderson — The problem is the pastor did not take care of his soul.Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. That’s good. Danny Anderson — Let me think about Billy Graham, Rich. I know Billy Graham wasn’t a pastor… Rich Birch — Right. Danny Anderson — …but that guy took care of his soul.Rich Birch — Right. Right.Danny Anderson — When you read his stuff, when you read his books, his his he was so diligent to watch over his heart with meditation and his scripture, the scripture. He never missed a time with God. He never missed time with God. So my dedication is I never miss my time with God. Rich Birch — Right. Danny Anderson — I don’t say I don’t say that to brag because that would be ridiculous. There’s nothing to brag about.Rich Birch — Right. No, yep.Danny Anderson — I do that because I need it.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.Danny Anderson — To keep my heart humble and aligned with God’s will.Rich Birch — Yeah, for sure. 100%.Danny Anderson — So, you know, I don’t believe the problem is the size of the church. I believe Jesus wants the whole world to be saved.Rich Birch — Right.Danny Anderson — So, and I’m part of that solution. So are you.Rich Birch — Right.Danny Anderson — So that means we gotta we got to grow our churches.Rich Birch — Yeah, and there’s way more people in Indianapolis in your backyard who don’t attend church that do. Danny Anderson — Absolutely. Rich Birch — And we’ve got to do what we can to get out in front of them and reach those people. I’ve never said this publicly, but I’m going to say it here because I’d love to get your reaction to it. Rich Birch — Years ago, 10 years ago, I was talking to a lead pastor of a fairly large church, a name brand church, and they said, you know, we we’re talking about this exact issue, growing a church and why do so many people fail and all of that. And this individual said you know I think the problem is or one of the problems is a church—and this is gonna sound crazy—if you’re leading a church of a couple hundred people what I’m about to say, you’re gonna say, that is nuts, but it resonates with me. I actually was like um I think there’s some truth to this. They said, you know, one of the problems is you get to a church of four or five thousand people and as the lead pastor, there’s not enough challenge. And I was like what? Rich Birch — And I leaned in and I said what are you talking about? And they’re like well At the end of the day, like i if I’m doing my job right, and I’ve told my people to do to do the work, and I’ve built amazing teams, and I’ve got a lot of people around me, and I and they’re they’re making it happen, my core job, sure, is to preach. I’m gonna get up every week, I’m gonna do you know maybe 30 times, I’m gonna preach, and sure, we’re gonna cast vision. But if i’m not if I don’t watch, I can create, ah I can build an empire, essentially, is what this person was saying, where I’m actually not being [inaudible]. Where I can kind of build this thing around me. And I was like, oh that’s an interesting idea. Because that there’s but I think there’s something there. It’s like these people you can you if you don’t have the right rhythms in your life stuff starts to get into your schedule you start doing stuff that you shouldn’t be doing you start thinking about things you shouldn’t be thinking about. You get distracted from the you know, because the thing is running because the thing is systemized. What do you think about that? React – nothing, you know, crazy idea. What do you think?Danny Anderson — Yeah. You know, that’s I have not heard that. That is a very interesting. I’m processing that as you say that like, huh? Rich Birch — Yes. Danny Anderson — Our church is like we reach about 8,000 people on a weekend now and I’m thinking holy cow!Rich Birch — Yeah. You’re not sitting around looking for stuff to do.Danny Anderson — No. I have I’m like, wow, I have to say no to stuff… Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Danny Anderson — …because I’m meeting with you know donors… Rich Birch — Yes. Danny Anderson — …and I’m I’m meeting with my team and on my schedule. My assistant keeps telling me, um hey, I think we’ve we’ve committed to too much.Rich Birch — Right. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.Danny Anderson — So I that does not resonate with me. I guess if my, if my goal was to, to kind of build something so that I could maybe have some free time in golf, I could see that being a problem, but I don’t golf, and I like to be busy.Rich Birch — Right. Yes. Yeah, no, I get that. Yeah, yeah. I thought it was an interesting idea. I thought the part that resonated with me was I think as the church grows, as we, you know, when you’re a church of a thousand, a church of two thousand, five thousand, ten thousand, each of those phases demands something differentDanny Anderson — Yes.Rich Birch — And your leadership has to change. And these kinds of things ah managing our own soul care, although there are some foundational things, like you say, stay committed, stay in the word, what you’re doing at 5.30 in the morning, you have to keep thinking about these at at every level. What does it look like? How do I how do I massage and change? I’m sure you’ve seen over time that your process has changed, what you’ve done, your rhythms have changed because, you know, just things look different. Danny Anderson — Absolutely. Rich Birch — So that’s interesting.Danny Anderson — And my kids have gotten older too, so that really helps.Rich Birch — Right. That does open up time for sure. Talk to me about on the book, the Church Growth Unleashed, we’re going to put a link in the show notes where people can pick up this. This actually struck me as the kind of thing that a team could read together. It was like, hey, this could be a good framing for us. I talked about earlier this idea of like, you need to talk about these things so that your team kind of like mirrors back. To me, this was like one of these like, hey, let’s let’s let’s have Danny talk to us about these things through this book. And then that will kind of create a conversation for us where we can get outside of it and look at it and say, what do we think about that? How are we doing?Rich Birch — Can you picture that? What but what could this look like if I if I went through this with my team?Danny Anderson — Yeah, I think it’s ah it would be a great discussion starter. I don’t think pastors talk about this stuff. Like I have a whole chapter in there on friendship. I don’t think pastors talk about that. They don’t talk about their friends… Rich Birch — Right. Danny Anderson — …because it’s really hard for a pastor to have friends. It’s really hard for staff members to have friends.Rich Birch — Right.Danny Anderson — Like how do you have friends? Like all the people in your life go to your church. Like how how does that look?Rich Birch — Right. Yep. Danny Anderson — How do you strike that balance? I have a whole chapter in there on your physical health and how your physical health affects your your your ability to to serve and lead and do your job. like Pastors don’t talk about that stuff. Listen, most pastors are out of shape and overweight. Rich Birch — It’s true.Danny Anderson — So why would you why would you talk about being in healthy when you’re not healthy?Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Danny Anderson — So this is a book that really puts its finger on like some of the key issues ah that affect ah leadership and having a healthy balance between being really good at your job, but also ah being super healthy in your… Like I have a whole chapter on family where… Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Danny Anderson — …how do you balance the this the the tensions of, like I know some churches and staffs, they’re so out of balance.Rich Birch — Yeah.Danny Anderson — Oh my gosh, I was i heard about a church the other day that did six services on Christmas Eve.Rich Birch — Right.Danny Anderson — Six. Rich Birch — Right. Danny Anderson — And look, i’m all I’m all about reaching lost people. I think it’s awesome. Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.Danny Anderson — But six services on Christmas Eve?Rich Birch — Right.Danny Anderson — Like and and they’re like rejoicing and praising God. And hey, I’m sure a lot of people got saved. I’m sure it was awesome. But I’m thinking about guess who I’m thinking about, Rich?Rich Birch — Yeah, the families. Yeah, for sure.Danny Anderson — Their staff, their staff, they you know, they just had services on Saturday, on Sunday, and then you turn around and do six Christmas Eve service. Anyway, I’m not dogging the church. I mean, I love reaching people.Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.Danny Anderson — But but man, if they don’t get that balance worked out, their staff will get burned out. Rich Birch — Right, right. Danny Anderson — And then they’ll resent the work, you know? And so, you know, it’s really it’s really a book about, you know, helping people talk about the the important things that need to be discussed and work through to have a healthy balance of of ministry and life.Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. Well, like I say, friends, we’ve got a link to the show notes in link in the show notes. You can also pick it up in Amazon and I’m sure where other where books are sold, that sort of thing. We want to point people to that. I don’t want to miss an opportunity to talk about the podcast as well. I had an honor of being on an episode. Danny Anderson — Yes, you did. Thank you for that. Rich Birch — But tell us a little bit about, now, tell us a little bit about the podcast. I will put a link to that as well. We want people to check that out. And I think it would be a great kind of companion to what we’re doing here on unSeminary for sure.Danny Anderson — Yeah. So, I mean, the Church Growth Unleashed is a podcast to help pastors, church leaders, and ministry leaders. I mean, I had the host of the unSeminary podcast on there last month.Rich Birch — Oh, sure.Danny Anderson — So that’s the quality.Rich Birch — Yeah.Danny Anderson — No, no, no. Listen, that’s the quality of people I try to have on there. And we just, hey, we just talk about this stuff. We talk about everything that that pastors go through, ministry leaders go through in ah in an authentic way. Like I’m an open book. Like I talk about everything. Because I want pastors to to have a place where they could be like, man, this guy gets me. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Danny Anderson — Or I was wondering about that, or no one’s ever talked about that before, or I needed somebody to say that. Because that’s what I needed as a young pastor. Like, I need help. And so that’s basic it’s basically, it’s basically the same heart as your podcast, just to help pastors, help ministry leaders to be effective as possible.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Good, I’d love, like I say, we’ll put we’ll put links to the show notes down there and do the podcasts and the books and all that stuff. Danny, this has been super encouraging. conversation today. I love what you’re doing. I love what Emmanuel’s up to. I love the balance that you, you know, have that you’re striking. You know, Emmanuel is, I love a church that’s aggressive for the gospel. That’s like, hey, we want to do stuff to reach people. And you can see that in the way you guys act, which is great. But then at the same time, you’re raising all these values and us, you know, frankly, some of these deeper questions that it can be easy to just not think about. And so I i just want to honor you for doing that. I think it’s incredible. So, so great to connect today.Danny Anderson — Well, thank you, Rich. You’re doing a great job. Love everything you do. Love your books. They’ve had a huge impact on my life. Keep writing them. Keep keep pumping into us.Rich Birch — Yeah. Nice.Danny Anderson — I know your audience is it gets tremendous value from this podcast and so do I, so thanks for what you do.Rich Birch — Where do we want to send people online to connect with you or to connect with the church just as we wrap up today?Danny Anderson — Yeah, so on Instagram, it’s @dannyanderson23. And that’s my Instagram handle. And then the the church website is eclife.org, eclife.org.Rich Birch — Love it.Danny Anderson — Yeah.Rich Birch — Thanks so much, Danny. Appreciate you being here today.Danny Anderson — Hey, thanks, Rich. God bless.

Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Adam Ader, the Groups Director at Parkview Christian Church in Illinois. Is your church looking to improve how you connect people into life-changing groups? Wondering how to lead a growing group ministry that truly impacts people’s lives? Tune in as Adam shares valuable insights on building a thriving group ministry that focuses on leadership development, group engagement, and real-life transformation. Raise up great leaders. // Parkview’s groups strategy uses term-based, free-market small groups to foster community and spiritual growth. Groups run in three 10-week terms per year, allowing participants to engage in short-term commitments while maintaining flexibility. Parkview believes that, at the end of the day, a great leader will outweigh perfect content and they can turn mediocre content into something more engaging. Parkview works hard to raise up great leaders, helping them identify who is the segment of people they are trying to reach with their group. Types of groups offered. // Parkview also leverages leaders’ passions to create groups that resonate with people. There are five categories that the groups at Parkview fall into. The first is Rooted, a foundational group for new believers which starts them on their journey. Then there are shared interest groups, general Bible-based small groups, support groups for people going through difficult circumstances, and Alpha groups for skeptics and seekers. The ten-week model. // Ten weeks can seem like a short timeframe to really grow and connect with others, however small groups can fizzle out if they stay together too long. Having an open-ended strategy can set a lot of the groups to end in failure. The goal of these ten-week groups is not to take participants from point A to Z but to help them take a meaningful step forward in their faith. By giving groups a well-defined end date, you provide them with the opportunity to end well and either recommit going forward, or explore new groups. Great leaders outweigh content. // We can become so focused on finding the perfect content that we miss out on the things that are truly important in small groups. We need to be disciples and help others grow, so focus on identifying and empowering leaders who can guide others effectively. Identify what you’re looking for. // Have clarity about what you want in a leader. Parkview encourages potential leaders to see their role as facilitating community rather than delivering lectures. Recruiting new small group leaders. // The best recruiters of new leaders are existing leaders. Encourage group leaders to be thinking, from the beginning, about who might be someone that can step up and do what they are doing. Emphasize relational skills and a love for Jesus over theological expertise. Offer training and support. // Parkview has a 90-minute initial training for all potential group leaders that covers the church’s mission, vision, values, and group systems. Once a person has committed to becoming a leader, they undergo ten weeks of training while they lead their group. These trainings include a mix of bite-sized video content and in-depth discussions. This modular approach allows leaders to engage with essential topics such as building community, managing conflict, and fostering spiritual growth. In addition, new leaders are paired with a coach—an experienced volunteer leader who provides guidance and encouragement throughout the initial stages of group leadership. Visit Parkview Christian Church at parkviewchurch.com and download the Parkview Groups Leader Guide here. EXTRA CREDIT // Get the Ready-to-Edit “When to Refer” Decision Guide for Small Group Leaders Are your small group leaders equipped to handle sensitive situations effectively? This exclusive resource from unSeminary Extra Credit is a ready-to-edit document to make it easy for you to provide your small group leaders with a training resource on when they should refer people in their group to someone else for assistance. Complete with a customizable decision tree and practical prompts, this tool empowers leaders to confidently care for their groups. Join unSeminary Extra Credit today to access this valuable resource and more! Download this resource now.  Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: 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! Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Well, hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Man, I am super excited for today’s conversation. This is one of those conversations that’s got in the middle of it a common tension that it’s a misnomer that um that lots of people have that we’re going to bust today. We’ve got some myths we’re going to bust. Plus, it’s going to be super helpful for you. Super excited to have ah Adam Ader with us. He is the groups director at Parkview Christian Church. It’s a multi-site church in ah in Illinois and church online. They’re repeatedly one of the fastest growing churches in the country. Super excited to have you on the show today, Adam. Welcome. So glad you’re here.Adam Ader — Hey, thanks, Rich. Appreciate it.Rich Birch — This is going to be wonderful. Thanks for your time. Really appreciate that. Give us a sense of Parkview. Kind of tell us the story. If, you know, if people were to arrive this weekend, kind of give us a sense of that and then tell us a little bit about your role.Adam Ader — Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I had the good fortune to land at Parkview as my first job out of college. Landed as a student ministry intern in 2005, actually. Rich Birch — Love it.Adam Ader — Had a little bit more hair growing up top at the time then I do now. But I got lucky. I didn’t know a thing about the church and landed there to find out that they were one of the fastest growing churches in the country. And I was like, Oh, what what have I gotten myself into? Adam Ader — But Parkview has been through like an incredible journey, really over the last 20 plus years of of just explosive growth. And we’re we’re in the south suburbs of Chicago. Our original location is in Orland Park. We’ve we’ve grown to the point where we have three locations, and they’re all kind of within a 15-minute drive with each other in a little sort of Bermuda triangle of Parkview campuses. And, you know, our our lead… Rich Birch — But in in that Bermuda triangle, good things happen, not bad things happen.Adam Ader — Yeah, we don’t see too many planes almost, thankfully. Rich Birch — That’s great.Adam Ader — But yeah, so the church has just been growing incredibly fast. We’ve seen God breathe incredible life just in people being kind of drawn into the church. We’re in a heavily Catholic and ex-Catholic area. And you know and that brings all kinds of exciting and interesting challenges with it. But um but God has just used what we’re doing and blessed it in incredible ways. Adam Ader — And you know there have been times where we’ve been white knuckling in it and just trying to hang on for dear life as more and more people showed up. And we’ve tried a lot of different things and and God has seen scene fit to to bless some of them in some really powerful ways. So it’s been an exciting place to kind of cut my teeth doing ministry. I’ll hit my 20-year mark in June of this year, actually.Rich Birch — Congratulations.Adam Ader — Thank you much. Thank you much. I’m waiting on that gold watch. I don’t think I’m going to get it. Rich Birch — Nice.Adam Ader — But yeah, I met my wife my third day at Parkview. And I had my kids here, and I couldn’t imagine a better place to get to do ministry and just feel incredibly blessed every time every day, I get to do this.Rich Birch — Oh, that’s so great. So fun to hear. You know, we often talk with leaders in fast growing churches, and that’s definitely kind of a substrate of, you know, kind of under all the different people that we talk to. And one of the things I want to kind of pick apart today and understand from your seats, your seat as the what’s multiple seats is you do lots of different things in this area – that’s for sure in groups – is how are you getting people connected to groups at Parkview? Rich Birch — So maybe let’s start with kind of an overview, kind of talk us through, let’s say you’re talking to an executive pastor or maybe another groups pastor, you’re at a conference and they’re like, tell me about groups at Parkview. What’s what’s all your short hands, open, closed, seasonal, you know, you know, how long do they stay together? All that kind of stuff. Give us a framework for what they are. And then we’ll dig in a little deeper.Adam Ader — Yeah, that’s that’s great. I’ll I’ll talk you through kind of our our current strategy. Rich Birch — Yep. Adam Ader — And then there’s like some history that’s going to have to go go into this a little bit.Rich Birch — Sure.Adam Ader — [inaudible] But where we’re currently at, we we focus largely on term-based free market small groups. Rich Birch — Okay.Adam Ader — Um, so we you’ll hear more about this down the road, but we we have leaned heavily into Rooted in the past. And we have a handful of sort of core content pieces that we will offer groups for each of these terms. Three times a year, we’ll offer 10-week groups terms. um And people can kind of opt into the group that seems best to them through a group finder tool that’s kind of housed on our website. Kind of a common thing, in a lot of churches do that. We’re not reinventing the wheel by any means in any of those areas.Rich Birch — Right.Adam Ader — But but really, we lean hard into leveraging like the passions of our leaders. We think that at the end of the day, a great leader is going to outweigh content.Adam Ader — And really what it comes down to, you know, our belief is a great leader can make average mediocre or even substandard content work really well, but a poor leader can take just to about any content off the tracks. Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.Adam Ader — So we we lean hard into raising up good leaders and helping them identify who are they trying to reach with their group? What kind of people along the road of faith do they want to invite in the community and help them just take at least one step forward?Rich Birch — Wow. Okay.Adam Ader — So, um you know, we do we do have long-term groups that run and, you know, they kind of do their thing and we love them, but most of them are closed groups. We’re leaning really hard into these term-based semesters, 10 weeks usually. And again, that’s kind of a rhythm that we picked up from Rooted along the way, that 10-week piece. Seems like a sweet spot… Rich Birch — Yep.Adam Ader — …for us to help people get in the good community. So give them an off ramp before it gets weird. You know what I mean?Rich Birch — Okay. That’s good. Well, tell us about, give us a sense of when you say free market, you talk about, it and I definitely want to drill in on that. I think it’s a huge insight, great leaders, outweigh content. We’re going to definitely come back to that, but give us a sense of what some of those kind of free market groups. What we, some of the passions, if, you know, if I was attending Parkview will be some of the things I would see on that tool to pick for the kinds of groups.Adam Ader — Yeah, great question. We kind of dropped them into a five sort of buckets, but there’s some flexibility with them. The first one would be that Rooted. We’d offer Rooted groups, and we see those as being kind of like a foundation point. People who are, you know, early in their journey can step in, really starting to gain a foundational understanding of who we are, what we believe, how we practice faith.Adam Ader — We offer shared interest groups. This one is kind of our newest deal. And this is, if we have a leader that has a passion that’s not even a Bible study based content, but they want to get people in the community around that hobby, we allow them to launch a group through our finder with some tools and support from us. And, you know, we see that happen. And we’ve seen some really great fruit from it, especially around a phenomenon that I don’t even understand yet, but it’s pickleball, man.Rich Birch — I was going to ask, are there pickleball groups?Adam Ader — Yes, there are.Rich Birch — Love it. So good.Adam Ader — The first pickleball group we launched, man, we had to close that 40 registrations.Rich Birch — Oh, sure. That’s great.Adam Ader — Yeah, just people love the pickleball. They love it.Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s fun. That’s fun.Adam Ader — Yeah, so so we had those available and and we’ve seen some great stuff there and we set we try to set the understanding that you know this is about community. But we want to help every person even in those groups take some step towards Jesus, right? And that’s where [inaudible]. We offer what we would just call a general small group type, which is for leaders that are choosing their own content, but it’s still a discussion-based, Bible study-based group type. Adam Ader — Support groups are an important leg for us as well. Groups that are just available for people who are going through difficult circumstances or common times in life. And then we also have Alpha groups available. And alpha is, ah you know, Nicky Gumbel and England’s content. And this is stuff that is, ah exists for skeptics, people with big questions about faith. It’s a great content to invite people who maybe aren’t all the way on the bus, maybe have one foot on, one foot off. And we’ve done some some creative things in the past with launching Alpha and bars and restaurants and things like that.Rich Birch — Right.Adam Ader — And we have those groups now available as well through our finder tool. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool.Adam Ader — So those are kind of the broad buckets. Yeah.Rich Birch — That’s really cool. I love that. So, so we’ve got Rooted, shared interests, small, small, typical kind of small, not typical, but small group kind of content, support groups, and then Alpha – love those five.Rich Birch — So talk to me about 10 weeks. I’m going to pretend to be the devil’s advocate. Don’t know that I should say that on a church podcast, but there I just did. 10 weeks. Like I, you, I, you, I understand the like, okay, where it can opt out before it gets weird. But what about on the other end, is 10 weeks long enough to actually accomplish the kind of, you know, community goals, faith goals. Talk talk us through that.Adam Ader — Yeah, that’s great. And I And I do think that it’s easy to look at this and say, how can we really how can we really get into it and grow together in such a short timeframe? I was one of those people who was skeptical of that model for a while, if I’m being totally honest.Rich Birch — Sure. Yep.Adam Ader — I’m like ah But you know what we’ve seen is that under the right circumstances, people open up really quickly. Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s true.Adam Ader — And this is something we learned [inaudible] immediately. And I think coming out of out of COVID, out of lockdown, out of having to learn to use tools like Zoom and and Teams meetings to do school and all these things, um man, I don’t think people take as long to break walls down because there’s just a sense of maybe an unspoken desperation for a real community and real relationships out there. And we don’t think that 10 weeks is the thing that’s going to take person from A to Z… Rich Birch — Right. Adam Ader — …but we do believe that 10 weeks is enough time for a person to take one solid step forward in their faith.Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good.Adam Ader — And so we feel like if we get people through 10 weeks and we can point to that and say, here’s the way that God has shaped or changed you in this time period. Oh man, that’s a win worth celebrating. And there’s something that happens, I think, when when small groups stick together too long, right? And I’m sure we’ve all seen it. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s true. Yep.Adam Ader — You know, where where you end up in this awkward sort of like a double dutch routine where everybody feels like they kind of want out and they’re no longer putting the effort into it but nobody wants to be the one to say that the marriage is over, sort of. You know? Rich Birch — Sure. Sure. Adam Ader — And and what we see, you we were seeing a lot of these groups that would they would fizzle after a certain amount of time. And then they wouldn’t be able to make eye contact with each other in church. Right?Rich Birch — Right. Right. Okay.Adam Ader — And it becomes weird.Rich Birch — Yes.Adam Ader — And suddenly they don’t know if they’re welcome to try a new group. They don’t know if it’s you know acceptable for them to try something different or if they’ve failed somehow. Right?Rich Birch — Right. Right.Adam Ader — So I feel like by having an open-ended long-term strategy, you’re setting a lot of your groups up to end in failure. And I believe that how you end things is almost as important as how you start them. Rich Birch — rightAdam Ader — And while by giving groups a solid end date, you give them the chance to end well… Rich Birch — That’s good. Adam Ader — …and also to recommit going forward. We hit the end of the 10 weeks and we’re like, man, this group, we’re we’re going places together. We love each other. like Let’s recommit to each other for the next period of time. Rich Birch — That’s good. Adam Ader — And I think there’s power in that.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Yeah, I can, I’m a huge fan of Alpha. I, at my church, outside of my job, I volunteer as an Alpha host. And so I get, I’ve often said like, it’s amazing in 10 weeks. It’s i actually kind of like the beginning of it because it’s like, these are all people I don’t know. And I’m like, I know by the end of these 10 weeks, we’re not only going to see some great progress happen in people’s lives, but we’re also going to see, you know, they’re going to form some friendships, which is incredible. So love that. Rich Birch — Well, let’s loop back. Great leaders outweigh content. That’s a huge saying. I think that’s true. Huge learning. So talk to us about that kind of philosophically. And I’d love to get in how do you find leaders, you know, doing these term based? I feel like, man, aren’t you on a treadmill all the time trying to get into leaders training them? Let’s talk through all that.Adam Ader — Yeah, that’s, that’s great. You know, I, I like like every guy who goes to Bible college, I ended up playing some guitar, right? And, you know, and, ah you know, I went through a period like much to my wife’s horror, where I spent way too much time and money trying to find like the the perfect guitar and the perfect, you know, amp and pedal and all these things. And and a quote from a, from a jazz musician named Philemonius Monk stood out to me at the time he said, um you know he said, he said, gear is important. But he said you got to figure that stuff out early and fast so that you can focus on things that are more important. Adam Ader — And for me, I think that that holds true with content, especially in group settings… Rich Birch — That’s good. Adam Ader — …where we can sort of get so focused on finding the perfect content that is going to do you know everything that we want it to do. And that’s going to create these you know these saintly, fully-disciple, fully-on-mission people. Rich Birch — Right.Adam Ader — And I think we can get so bogged down in the weeds that we miss out on the stuff that is that is truly important. Because I think that, man, people are the thing that make the engine go, right?Rich Birch — Right, right.Adam Ader — And and if we’re if we’re helping people become people who can disciple, who can help others grow, right?Rich Birch — Right.Adam Ader — that’s kind of the that’s the money spot. That’s where wherere where we need to be pouring gas on the fire if we want to really make a difference. And I’ve seen it play out time and time again. You know we’ve had you know we we had a long period of being heavily invested in Rooted. And in fact, for years, it was almost our only group offering outside of the corporate…Rich Birch — Right. Okay. Just kind of pushing everybody through Rooted. Yeah.Adam Ader — Yeah, everybody all in, and it was that it was a beautiful season of like top-down involvement from our from my church and our leadership that ah that helped a lot of people grow. And I was one of those, again, early naysayers who was like, you you mean to tell me we’re just gonna keep shuffling out the same content over and over again, right? How’s that gonna work? And then you start to see it in action and you see it snowball and gain momentum… Rich Birch — Yep. Adam Ader — …and you see people who participate multiple times, and yet come out of it looking a little different each time. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Adam Ader — And then you see the leader step up and come out of it looking a little bit bit better and a little bit stronger, and the fruit is a little bit more visible each time. So that was enough to kind of break me of my my obsession and focus on content, and instead say, you know what, if we can find something that aligns with where we want to go, where we want to see people go, who we want them to become, right? We can…that’s that’s enough, right? Because if we put good leaders that we trust on guiding people through this content, we can feel very confident that good things are going to happen.Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. Let me challenge a little bit though. Where do you find all these great leaders? Like that that that sounds amazing. I think our, maybe it’s just me, but I’ve leaned on the crutch of content in the past because I literally have thought I probably haven’t articulated like this until you said it but I’m like, yeah, but if we just get some good content, we can kind of take a mediocre leader and make it work. But man, if I’m putting more weight on finding leaders, how are you finding them? What are you doing to to extract these leaders out of you know your community to find them?Adam Ader — Yeah, yeah, that’s that’s really good. I think um for us, you know I think a big key has been has been clarity about what we want from a leader first and foremost.Rich Birch — Okay, yep.Adam Ader — And when you when you say, you know hey, I have a stack of mediocre leaders and I’m going to try to let the content be you know be a champion, I think we we have leaned hard instead into saying, what do you actually need to lead a good experience through this season? Right?Rich Birch — That’s good.Adam Ader — And trying to set the bar for for people help them understand we don’t need you to be a preacher, a theologian, you know? Rich Birch — Right, right. Adam Ader — You don’t need [inaudible] certificates to lead a good group. Man, you just got to have some relational chops and care enough to go in on this. And, and then reframing group leaders as as guides, right? Rich Birch — That’s good.Adam Ader — You know, its sometimes we’ll use the term Sherpa. But now I think according to my daughters, that means that’s a clothing item. And more than it is, they know.Rich Birch — Nice. That’s funny.Adam Ader — But, you know, um but if we can reframe what we actually expect from them, and sort of like remove some of the terror, being asked to lead, right?Rich Birch — Yes. That’s good. That’s good. Yep. For sure.Adam Ader — You know I mean, that that helps us get people on the bus. And then you know we like to say that, you know, we can take a willing heart with some relational skill and a love for Jesus, and we can we can get them to the place where they can lead a great group. Um, I think we’ve been guilty in the past of kind of saying, you know, Hey, here’s, here’s your stuff, right? Here’s, here’s, here’s your content. Here’s, here’s a, here’s a one hour training… Rich Birch — Yes. Adam Ader — …and, uh, good luck. You know, go go forth us and, uh, and change lives. Uh, and I think that, uh, both through the way Rooted the structured and through the lessons we’ve learned around that over the years, we’ve learned that, um, having a, having a robust investment in helping those leaders figure it out, um, walking alongside of them, not just in a and it kind of a vague address sense, but, you know, weekly, we’re connected to these leaders and um helping them troubleshoot issues.Rich Birch — Right.Adam Ader — In that sense, right, we are able to get leaders there. The second part of this is, and this is another lesson learned from Rooted for us. I swear, I don’t work for the Rooted network, but you’re going to hear that from me.Rich Birch — No, it’s good. We’re fans of Rooted. We’ve had, we’ve had the Rooted guys on. We’ve, it comes up for sure. Like it’s, it’s a substrate and particularly, you know, fast growing churches, people across the country, it’s really had a huge impact. We, we love, I love the guys at Mariners and love, you know, their gift to to all of us through Rooted. It’s amazing. It’s great. So yeah, no, that’s good. What’s what’s the other lesson you’ve learned through that?Adam Ader — Yeah, absolutely, is um that the the best recruiters of leaders are leaders for us.Rich Birch — Right. Right.Adam Ader — So yeah, and that’s that’s a Rooted foundational principle. And we’ve been able to sort of transplant that from Rooted to all of our group types.Adam Ader — We start with that end in mind, where we’re asking leaders to from week one, be considering who’s who’s the person that can step up and do what you’re doing right now.Rich Birch — That’s good.Adam Ader — And since most of them have come from this place of, hey, we got shoulder tapped by our leader, right.Rich Birch — Right. Right.Adam Ader — And ah they were crazy. But I took a step out and and I received what I needed to complete a good group experience. So that that has been really helpful for us. And then, you know, our group of pastors on the ground are just, man, they’re really good at casting vision… Rich Birch — Yep. Adam Ader — …and making making compelling asks. So that’s kind of a secret sauce for us.Rich Birch — That’s good. Talk to me about the support and training, just a little bit more, kind of flesh that out. If if I if one of those great groups pastors came to me and said, hey, we you know, you’d be interested, we’d be interested in you leading a group, um how how do you provide some training and support for me for, you know, a term or multiple terms? What’s that look like?Adam Ader — Yeah, for us, it really comes down to we we do have an initial ah about a 90 minute training that we’re going to take all leaders through. And that’s where they’re going to gain base level understanding of our mission, our vision, our values and our systems in groups.Rich Birch — Yep. Yep. Love it.Adam Ader — You know, that’s that’s the starting point. But then from there, once we sort of would get the yes, we seal the deal, you know, we close the sale. We get them connected to do a couple of things. The first one is we get them connected to a coach. And that’s a volunteer leader for us who leads leaders. Not a crazy concept. But that’s just one more voice in their ear, kind of telling them, hey, you can do this. And I got your back, right? I’m praying [inaudible] all that good stuff.Adam Ader — And then we’re really committed to 10 weeks of ongoing training that happens around the first 10 weeks that their group meets.Rich Birch — Okay. Yep.Adam Ader — And that’s been really helpful for us. we’ve We’ve just kind of developed some pieces in-house that can be delivered in anything from a 10-minute bite-size ah video message to an hour-long discussion. Rich Birch —That’s cool.Adam Ader — But so it’s kind of modular for us. And for groups that meet on our site locations during the short term, those ten-week terms, they’re going to receive from one of our group staff members or coaches weekly guided training through those 10 topics. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Adam Ader — And they’re just around you know basic vital things you need to do to lead a group well. Things like how to you know create community from the start, how to serve together, how to deal with conflict, how to help people grow, all these things. And for our groups that generate that need offsite in homes or locations, we have that content in video format, and it can be sort of administered by their coach or by a staff member. Hey, watch this video. Let’s have a back and forth conversation about it. Let’s see how your group is doing in this area.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. I love that. And you know, both from Alpha and from Rooted, there’s there is some power you can see in the like, hey, we’re leading this together. We’re all together. We’re kind of doing some sort of pre-huddle thing, you know, a little bit of training, a little bit of um even like, hey, I’m having the trouble with this person or I’m not sure how to draw them out. It’s amazing how that kind of on-site in-person feedback really helps leaders grow and step into you know something great. So you can see how taking similar lessons and then applying them to the rest of your group system. Yeah, I can totally see how that is ah is working for sure. Rich Birch — Pivoting in a slightly different direction I know when you know over the years sitting in the kind of executive pastor seat, the communication seat, trying to kind of you know we got a lot of different things we need to communicate. And I’m thinking three terms a year group stuff like that’s a lot of talking about groups to get people into groups. What does that look like for you guys? How do you actually communicate like how are you you know promoting groups what does that side of it look like? And then um yeah let’s start there that’s the starting point.Adam Ader — Yeah, yeah, that’s that’s great. And, you know, it can’t it can kind of feel like a let’s just keep shoveling coal on to the same fire… Rich Birch — Right. Adam Ader — …you know, over the course of the year thing.Rich Birch — Yep.Adam Ader — But ah but what what we found is actually kind of the regularity of it has really helped us kind of create some rhythms throughout the year that have like created a sense of expectancy in our people that have been with us for a while. Rich Birch — Yep. Adam Ader — And helps even with things like, hey, when we’re talking speech and calendar, promotional marketing things, the The good thing is we you know we lean hard into celebrating wins of all sizes and we lean hard into gathering stories, right? I mean, if you’ve got the numbers and you’ve got the stories… Rich Birch — That’s good. Adam Ader — …then you know you can feel strongly like you’re winning. So if we’re if we’re gathering those things and we have a bucket of those stories, those testimonials, it makes marketing a little bit easier, right?Adam Ader — And you know and then when we have a a marketing and communications team that has bought in with us, and when our upper leadership is also bought into the vision and the approach for groups, those conversations do become quite a bit easier, right?Rich Birch — That’s good.Adam Ader — Obviously we all we all have one sandbox to play in, right? And we know that you know the weekend announcement um you know is kind of the thing that we all vie for, and the the sermon topic mention is you know, even oh that whole question… Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That’s the holy grail. Yeah, for sure. Adam Ader — Yeah, exactly. So, you know, it’s but ah thankfully, you know, it doesn’t turn into a game of who can butter up the senior pastor best to to get a toss in. When the vision is there from the top, it makes that stuff a little easier. And so when we can go back and say, hey, this is the thing that that is both moving and growing, right, and we’re seeing life change happen in it for us in our context, it’s not really too hard to get the buy-in for the mention we need.Adam Ader — The other thing that’s been really helpful for us is that we’ve learned, because we now have multiple group types available on this group finder, that trying to create a sense of FOMO, a fear of missing out for people, is, is a real thing that can lend some, uh, that can give us some kind of heat going into a group season. Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. Adam Ader — Because when we can say, well, we can say, Hey, but we’ve got a group for you, no matter where you’re at on your journey, but they fill up fast and there’s not an unlimited set of spots for just the one big thing we’re all doing. Rich Birch — Right.Adam Ader — You need to get up, you need to get up on that group finder on January 4th, when those groups go live… Rich Birch — Right. Yep. Adam Ader — …if you want your “pick of a litter.” So.Rich Birch — Right.Adam Ader — That’s all you know that that thing I think has been able to replace some of that ah, Oh man, we have got to get the main stage announcement every week this month.Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, that’s good.Adam Ader — You know?Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. That’s good. Well, and you can see the, as somebody who’s mildly interested in marketing stuff, you can see how that kind of open window, hey, enrollments open, jump in, ah you know, a couple times a year, you could build some serious insight, excitement around that. We kind of, we kind of, you know, joked about it, but loop back on a lead pastor think of a lead pastor’s listening in and talk to us, you know, what would you say to a lead pastor about the like, random throwaway comment in their message about groups, something they’re learning in a group, you know, how important is that to the, you know, the the group’s culture at at your church?Adam Ader — Yeah, yeah, you know, for us, um what it comes down to is that’s the most trusted voice in our organization for our people, right?Rich Birch — Yep.Adam Ader — We know it all. And um sometimes, you know, you get the sermon, right? Okay, we’re going to do the one big, “this is about community” sermon this year.Rich Birch — Right.Adam Ader — You know, if it when you get that, you know, that’s gold.Rich Birch — Right. Yep.Adam Ader — We know that. But people are listening to that, to the things that are sort of in between the big points, right? So if, if your lead pastor can say, uh, you know, I did Rooted this fall… Rich Birch — Yep. Adam Ader — …you know, and in my Rooted group, this is something that happened. In my Rooted group, here’s something I learned. Or here’s a way we connected or in my prayer experience during Rooted, I got, you know, I felt God speak to me in this way. Uh, man, to me, those, those reinforced the importance of the big announcements, and they turned people’s ears. Because we have to battle constantly the idea that all of our ex-Catholics, a lot of them don’t have a strong context for just the things that your mainline denominational churches do, right? Rich Birch — Yep.Adam Ader — So the idea that somebody came to us from the maybe the Methodist church down the road that they probably have some idea what a small group is, we can’t assume those things.Rich Birch — Right.Adam Ader — We can’t take those things for granted. So to hear personal stories, the impact stories, or have stories shared of life change from those things, those are those are invaluable to us. You know? They’re they’re also not things that we can count on at every moment because, like like you alluded to earlier, and in a church that is growing rapidly and whose decision making is filtered through the lens of how are we going to reach the prodigal. We have to fit in and align with that, or you know we’re just pulling sideways energy away from the mission, and that’s something we never want to do or be.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Um, do you do in any of your, um, types of groups in that maybe it’d be in that kind of small group, the kind of more typical small group content kind of group. Do you do sermon based groups, like groups that follow along and generate questions or maybe do you guys generate questions based on, you know, what you guys are talking about on the weekends? What tell me about that.Adam Ader — Yeah, great question. We we have a weekly sermon study guide that’s developed in-house. Rich Birch — Yep. Adam Ader — And goes out via just an email subscription list that can be accessed through our website. Rich Birch — Yep. Adam Ader — Goes out weekly service over the course of the year. And we make that available to any of our long-term group types that want to engage that way. It’s not a primary push for us, but it is available and an option. Rich Birch — Right. Okay. Adam Ader — Last data for us was that out of groups that are not meeting ah just in a 10-week window, those long-term groups, about 25 to 30% of them are using that weekly service study guide.Rich Birch — Okay. Okay. That’s cool. Well, you’ve given us, then and then we’ll link to this in the show notes. You’ve given us the Parkview Group’s leader guide, ah which is a fantastic resource. I would encourage people to, you know, pick this up and, you know, take a look through it. It’s a, it’s a great resource even to inspire you, but tell us a little bit about where does this work in the training process? How are you using this tool? Talk to us a little bit about this.Adam Ader — Yeah, that’s great. So all of our leaders, regardless of group type that they’re leading, even if it’s a group type like Alpha or Rooted that would have some of its own distinctive training elements, is still going to get walked through this handbook… Rich Birch — Okay. Yep. Adam Ader — …by a member of our team as their first step into groups. We feel like it’s really important for them to start with the overall mission, vision, and purposes of of our church, and then how groups fits into that. The last thing we’re trying to do is create offshoots, right… Rich Birch — Yes. Adam Ader — …or or little [inaudible] that meet in people’s living rooms… Rich Birch — Yep, yes. Yes. Adam Ader — …you know we don’t want that. Adam Ader — But this handbook tool is meant to just give them grounding of you know what a group leader is, what we expect from them. You know the we have four traits listed in there that would a factor into what we think a successful group leader even is. And then it introduces them to our kind of our systems and processes, which you know are are essential to keep people on track with all that. Rich Birch — Love it. Adam Ader — So that’s really the place of the handbook.Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s great. i I’d encourage people to take a look what the part what there’s a bunch of it that I loved. I love the clarity of the language is clearly you spend have spent a lot of time to hey, let’s get to something that’s like super practical. Later in the book, there’s a whole or in the booklet, there’s a whole conversation around, hey, you are not alone. And it clearly outlines what a coach is and what a coach isn’t, which I loved. I love that language, particularly. I think it frames that discussion very well. And then also, which I think is so important because I’ve seen too many group members kind of die on the vine on this issue. It’s when to refer. Rich Birch —So like, if there are things happening in your group that are going sideways, like because these people want to help folks, they just keep taking it. And it’s like, no, there are times where we should you know refer to other people. Let’s let’s escalate this stuff. I thought, again, what ah what a helpful, even just downloading that and ripping it off, sure, give them credit. But you know using that kind of language would be helpful ah you know for you friends that are listening in. It’s a great resource. Thanks for providing that for us.Adam Ader — Oh yeah, no problem. You know It’s like every every group leader’s worst nightmare, right? That rogue group member that you don’t know what to do with. And man, we we feel like the quicker we can put those fears at ease for people, say it’s not your job to manage people in crisis through these things. You can support, pray and love, but man, send them where they need to go. That’s important.Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. Great, great, great resource. Thanks for for sharing that for us. As we kind of look to the future, what are, you know, when you think about groups down the road, what are the questions you’re asking, things that are on the horizon, stuff that you’re thinking about, you know, that we’re, you know, you’re wrestling with, or maybe some stuff you’re experimenting with, that kind of thing. What what are you thinking about for the future for groups at Parkview?Adam Ader — Yeah, you know, I mean, one of the things we’re thinking about is how to help people sort of self-select into the right group for them at any given moment.Rich Birch — That’s good.Adam Ader — And, you know, we we want to be able to offer with each of these open groups terms, we want to be able to offer something that can catch people no matter where they’re at along their spiritual journey. Right.Rich Birch — That’s good. Yeah, that’s great.Adam Ader — And that’s where content’s helpful. But it also means when you have more options, you have more ah more potential for confusion, right? More opportunities to sort of lose people in the weeds of what do I do? Rich Birch — Right. Adam Ader — And we’ve also, you know, we’ve all seen what happens when somebody gets in the wrong kind of group, right?Rich Birch — Right, right.Adam Ader — And but so figuring out ways to help people gain a greater understanding of what’s available. But also um we’re having conversations about what maybe a short assessment tool for people might look like through through our app or our website to help people, you know maybe if they can answer a few questions and we can spit back some group suggestions, maybe even alongside some personal like growth resources and serving suggestions. That’s that’s the kind of tool that really has my ears perked. Rich Birch — That’s cool. Adam Ader — Because you know we all know that there’s no one size fits all group type or even personal growth tool that’s going to be exactly what everyone needs along the way. But trying to help people find the right avenue and the right step. We want simplicity, but we also want enough flexibility that we can yeah really help people take sort of a custom-made step forward.Rich Birch — That’s great. I love that idea of, you know, you could imagine a survey that’s five or six questions that kind of helps get a sense of that. And then it spits out a likeliness score or something like that. Here’s a couple of different types of groups that you could try. um Yeah, I could see that could be really helpful paired within your online group selector. That could be super helpful for sure for helping people self sort.Rich Birch — Yeah the the the upside of self-sorting on a you know a menu is, wow, there’s lots of options. The downside is, wow, there’s lots of options. You know? Adam Ader — Right! Rich Birch — So um you know helping people with that, is you can see where that’d be helpful. Well, this has been incredible, super helpful, Adam. Anything you’d like to say kind of in as we close today’s conversation, I really appreciate you being here today.Adam Ader — Yeah, no, no, I would just I just like to say that, you know, the the real journey for me has been people, people, people. Rich Birch — That’s good. Adam Ader — And, you know, through my whole time in student ministry here, where I was kind of running programming and and doing all of your standard student minister stuff. Um, you know, over, over that 13 year stretch, uh, it really became about, man, all these hours spent in front of the computer, uh, planning and writing, um, are they impacting people as much as, as the leaders that we’re pouring into? And the answer came back to me no over and over again. Adam Ader — So when I had an opportunity to, uh, to jump into groups world, it made, it made perfect sense to me. And, um, man, every, every hour spent pouring into a leader, pouring into people, man, that’s not one wasted.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.Adam Ader — And that’s where I want to continue to pour my, my energy and I hope others will too.Rich Birch — That’s so good. Well, I appreciate you being here, Adam. If people want to track with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online?Adam Ader — Yeah, absolutely, parkviewchurch.com is our church’s website. You can see what we’re doing, see what we’re doing to try to continue reaching people in the south suburbs, in the south side of Chicago. And um you know my contact information is also available on the website.Rich Birch — That’s great. Thanks for being here today, sir. Thank you so much.Adam Ader — Hey, thanks Rich, appreciate it.