unSeminary Podcast

Growth can be deceiving, masking deeper issues within churches. A high-jump metaphor illustrates how early advantages can lead to complacency. Key focus areas include capturing first-time guest information, retaining new donors effectively, and the importance of fast follow-up to maintain engagement. Maintaining healthy kids-to-staff ratios is critical for future viability. Rich emphasizes that true strength lies in smart staffing and sustainable growth practices, ensuring long-term health for the church.

Eric Garza, Executive Pastor at Cross Church in Texas, shares insights from leading one of America's fastest-growing bilingual multisite ministries. He discusses how the church expanded from 1 to 12 campuses in just over seven years, utilizing a centralized bilingual strategy. Eric explains the importance of identical ministry across campuses while balancing local context. He also reveals how Next Gen programming primarily operates in English, yet actively includes Spanish-speaking kids. Join him as he pioneers bilingual ministry in the Rio Grande Valley.

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re joined by Dr. Warren Bird—author, researcher, and one of the most trusted voices in church leadership studies. Warren has co-authored over 35 books for pastors and church leaders, including Hero Maker, Better Together, Next, Resilience Factor, and his newest, Becoming a Future-Ready Church. Known for his deep data-driven insights, Warren has spent decades researching trends that shape healthy, growing churches. What’s next for large churches in North America—and how are they shaping the future of ministry? How are they adapting after the pandemic? Are they thriving, struggling, or transforming in unexpected ways? Warren shares early findings from his newest national research study—The Large Church Survey 2025—which explores how churches of 1,000 or more are changing and what’s coming next for the future of the church. Exploring large church health. // Large churches have reshaped the landscape of ministry over the last fifty years. Yet following the pandemic, questions have emerged: Have they fully come back? Are they still growing disciples—or just attracting crowds? Warren’s latest study, available at bit.ly/largechurch2025, is designed to answer those questions by gathering data from churches with 1,000+ in-person attendance. The goal is to measure growth, transparency, discipleship, and community impact in a post-pandemic world. Cultural distrust of institutions. // Warren notes that many people today are skeptical of large organizations, including churches. Scandals, media coverage, and declining trust in institutions have fueled the perception that “big” means “impersonal” or “unaccountable.” Yet Warren argues that healthy large churches can be powerful forces for good—offering specialized ministries such as special needs programs, counseling centers, and community partnerships that smaller churches often can’t sustain. Early findings: community and young adults. // Although data collection is still underway, some surprising trends are already emerging. The second-highest area of growth since the pandemic has been churches’ service and impact on their local communities. Large churches are not retreating—they’re doubling down on outreach. Even more encouraging, the top area of growth is the spiritual response among young adults. Despite common myths, many large churches are seeing renewed engagement from people in their 20s and 30s who are hungry for spiritual depth and authentic community. The power of small groups. // One consistent trend across every five-year survey Warren has conducted since 2000 is the growing emphasis on small groups and teams. In the most recent data, 92% of churches give their highest priority to small groups as essential for discipleship and connection. Warren summarizes the insight simply: “You get bigger by getting smaller.” Large churches thrive when they help people move from rows to circles—building relational environments where faith grows deeper. Raising leaders from within. // Another major finding centers on leadership development. Among churches of 5,000 and larger, 92% report having a residency, internship, or formal leadership training program. The median number of participants per church is 15. This suggests that future pastors, missionaries, and ministry leaders are increasingly being raised up inside the local church rather than emerging solely from seminaries. Warren calls this a promising trend that could strengthen the next generation of church leadership. Comeback stories. // The data also reveals a surprising recovery among large churches. So far, 53% of churches with attendance over 2,000 report being at least 10% larger today than they were in 2019. Some have even doubled or tripled in size. At the same time, a smaller group continues to struggle to regain momentum—creating what Warren describes as a “K-shaped recovery” across the church landscape. These insights will help leaders benchmark where their church stands and how to plan for the future. A younger generation of leaders. // Contrary to the myth that megachurches are a baby boomer phenomenon, early data shows that the average senior pastor age has actually declined since the last survey. Many fast-growing churches are being led by a younger generation of pastors—some who planted their congregations and others who revitalized long-standing churches. To participate in the Large Church Survey 2025 and receive the full results, visit bit.ly/largechurch2025. The survey takes about 20 minutes and is open until November 11, 2025. For more on Warren’s work, follow him on LinkedIn or explore his latest book Becoming a Future-Ready Church to stay ahead of emerging ministry trends. 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: Risepointe Do you feel like your church’s or school’s facility could be preventing growth? Are you frustrated or possibly overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your building becoming obstacles in the path of expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt that you could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the community’s needs? Well, the team over at Risepointe can help! As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead you to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Your mission should not be held back by your building. Their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to incorporate creative design solutions to help move YOUR mission forward. Check them out at Risepointe.com and while you’re there, schedule a FREE call to explore possibilities for your needs, vision and future…Risepointe believes that God still uses spaces…and they’re here to help. Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. We are honored to have a guest with us, Dr. Warren Bird today, who, what can I say about Warren Bird? He has co-authored 35 books for church leaders, but it’s more that, not that he’s just written a bunch of books. These are a number of the books that from my perspective are like the go-tos on their topic.Rich Birch — Hero Maker on leadership development, Better Together on healthy mergers, Next on pastoral succession, ah Resilience Factor on effective leadership teams. And his latest is incredible: Becoming a Future-Ready Church on these eight emerging church trends. He’s not only an author but he’s also a researcher and the work that he produces, I think, is among the best that’s out there. His background is a pastor, seminary professor. He was a research director at Leadership Network and was the executive vice president of research at ECFA, the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability.Rich Birch — Warren, I am so glad to have you here. He’s also, one of the distinctions Warren has is he’s one of the few people that I’ve said, anytime you want to come on the podcast, you come on, we’ll make space. And so he reached out. Happy to have Warren on. Welcome. So glad you’re here.Warren Bird — Wow, Rich, you just rattled all that off. It’s like my life story. I could do that for you because you are so articulate and and the impact you’ve had on me. I listen to your podcast very regularly. The consulting insights when I you and I are sharing a speaking platform and all. So I could have done the same thing for you, but thank you for having me.Rich Birch — Oh, that’s kind of you. That’s kind of you to say that. And today we’re talking, you’re in the midst of one of the things I love about Warren, and and you might know this if you bump into him at a conference, he’s always working on some project. And he’s always wants to pick your brain about, Hey, like I’m working on this thing, got this thing coming up. And we were at a conference recently and he was talking about his latest research project. And so why don’t you talk to us about the study that you’re currently engaged in? Rich Birch — And friends, I want you to stay tuned because we’re going I’m going to try to pull some early results out of Warren. This is the first place that some of these results have been talked about. So you’re getting an exclusive here, which is great, or a first because you’re listening in today. But what is this study that you’re working on?Warren Bird — So Rich, the world of large churches—let’s let’s just say in-person attendance of a thousand and higher—you know, that was a big change in the face of the North American, actually the global church, the rise of the large church in the last 50 or so years. But now we’ve had the pandemic where large churches were hit the hardest, unless you were in like Florida or Texas, where they didn’t even participate in the pandemic. But the rest of us got hit hard.Rich Birch — Yes.Warren Bird — And and the question is, have they come back? And if they’ve come back, are they different? And then there’s that growing skepticism of, well, are big churches actually an asset or a liability? To what extent do they actually make their communities better? To what extent are they really healthy and vital versus, you know, are, are they an inch deep and a mile wide?Warren Bird — What’s the level of financial transparency? I mean, you, you, you look at, you listen to ah headlines in the media and then they always have adjectives in front of the word megachurch, like rich megachurch or or something a even more disparaging. Well, how, how “rich” are they? Rich Birch — Yes. Warren Bird — Do people give more because they go to a larger church and more important, you know, what’s the level of transparency and discipleship that’s there? And, and fundamentally what’s the bar of discipleship and, and what are churches who are exploding with growth, in particular, are they giving out free coffee or are, are they giving out Jesus in a way that’s resonating with the population around them? Warren Bird — So it’s it’s time to explore and to say, well, what’s happening? And the best way to do it, i mean, we hang out at conferences, Rich, because I don’t want to just ask questions out of the top of my mind. I want to know what people want to know about their world, their peers.Rich Birch — Yeah.Warren Bird — And I can put that in a question and find out from a bunch of churches and then come back to you and say, well, here’s the lay of the land. And more importantly, here’s what seems to be around the next corner…Rich Birch — That’s good.Warren Bird — …for churches that they are anticipating. Rich Birch — Yes. Warren Bird — Can you tell I’m excited about this project? Rich Birch — Yeah, I was going to… Warren Bird — Bit.ly/largechurch2025Rich Birch — Great. that’s the That’s the link. We’re driving towards that today, friends. And you’re looking particularly for churches over a thousand is the is the kind of the… Warren Bird — In-person attendance, yes. Rich Birch — In in-person attendance.Warren Bird — And that’s adults and children, all your campuses, every nose that’s there on it on a given weekend. You know, is it somewhere around 1,000 to up to 100,000? And it’s…Rich Birch — All those people over a hundred thousand were asking you not to participate. Yeah, that’s great. That’s so, this is good.Warren Bird — Well, that’s another story. Yeah I just interviewed the pastor of Africa’s third largest attendance church, and they would be more than 100,000 on a weekend across their campuses.Rich Birch — Yes, it’s amazing. AmazingWarren Bird — But that’s another story.Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. So a couple things, just while we’re kind of establishing why this particular study. So there does seem to be this um undercurrent in the culture in general. I don’t know whether it’s just the church culture that’s like, it kind of looks down on large churches. Rich Birch — In fact, I was at an event earlier this year of large church pastors where the vibe there for sure was like, and it’s one of these kind of like social things. They get all their people together. And it’s outside of they’re all from the same denomination, but it’s not run by the denomination. They just do it themselves. And the reason is, is because they feel like, oh, everybody else looks down on us.Rich Birch — So why is that? Why do you, why is it that we seem as, as Christians to kind of, I don’t know. It’s like we, we, we look at these large churches suspiciously. Why, why do you think that is?Warren Bird — A lot of reasons. The probably the biggest reason is the cultural distrust of institutions, church included. And and that’s all the major institutions.Warren Bird — Somehow we think, and I’ll just use a wild example, that going to GoFundMe where there’s zero accountability that my money is going to be better used than in an established non-profit or Christ-centered non-profit or church or whatever. And it’s like, really? But that’s the tenor of the culture. Warren Bird — And there have been enough scandals that the media has highlighted that people like, okay, yeah, you’re raising money for the church van, for the youth. I mean, that’s a great idea, but i you know do I have any confidence that that’s what’s happening? That’s just on the money side. There are so many other factors that influence the distrust in large organized religion.Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so true. You were saying about the, you know, when you see any scandal write ups, if the something goes sideways at a church, they talk about a rich megachurch or an affluent megachurch or a whatever.Rich Birch — The other thing that bugs me in those reports is they always talk about, well, you know, they have rock and roll band. And like they they kind of talk about some of the stuff we do as if it’s like, well, that’s the reason, the only reason why people are there. So interesting stuff.Warren Bird — Yeah. So, so Rich, let me put this in context.Rich Birch — Yes.Warren Bird — I am all for every single church, whether it’s three people, 30 people, 300, 3000, 30,000, whatever.Rich Birch — Yeah.Warren Bird — If they are making disciples of Jesus Christ… Rich Birch — Amen. Warren Bird — …and even more so if they are making disciple-makers of Jesus Christ. Warren Bird — Now, when a church is explosively growing and it’s genuine, I’m just thrilled by it. Because large churches have the opportunity to do things that other sized churches don’t. Rich Birch — Right.Warren Bird — Like let’s say special needs ministry that that often is very volunteer intensive and sometimes staff intensive and may require a certain room. You know, it’s a a quiet room or or ability to do things structurally with your facility that just not every church can do. But but large churches can. So I’m trying to zero in on, okay, every church size can do something well.Warren Bird — And actually the survey at bit.ly/largechurch2025 is part of a series that’s going to compare against every other size. So for example, the average pastor age, or the average pastor tenure, or the average, whatever. We’re going be able to do across all sizes. I’m doing the very large church size and, and I’m, that’s, that’s what, that’s the size that’s hardest to get good data on. And I’m bullish on the outreach, on the impact on their communities.Warren Bird — In fact, let me let me leak one early finding.Rich Birch — SureWarren Bird — We gave 15 things where we said, what has, have these changed since the pandemic? Rich Birch — Right. Warren Bird — Have they increased, stayed the same, and gone down? The number two vote at present is our service and impact on our local community.Rich Birch — Interesting.Warren Bird — Wow, that’s such a positive thing… Rich Birch — Right. Warren Bird — …especially for large churches. Rich Birch — That’s amazing. You know, one of the things in in the coaching I’ve done with churches, we talk about magnetic community service as a key piece of an invite culture that people want to be a part of a church that is not only making a difference, but they want to be seen as being a part of of a church that’s making a difference, so that I can invite my friends to come be a part of that. Rich Birch — And it’s interesting, as I’ve talked with some large churches about that, you know, we’ll talk about this particular area. And they’re like, oh, we’ve never thought of that as like ah a way for us to reach our community. They’re like, it just seems like the thing we should do. And I’m like, no, you should be inviting first time guests to come and do that to be a part of. But that’s cool to see. Now, so what you said, number two, what was number one? Yeah, I’m going to try to milk more of this out of you here of these things, if you don’t mind saying.Warren Bird — Very exciting. Very exciting. It’s the spiritual response by young adults.Rich Birch — Interesting.Warren Bird — Wow. In other words, the the people that we’re able to impact as a church who are young adults, we have seen a clear increase in the spiritual interest of that group. Wow.Rich Birch — Isn’t that interesting? We’re seeing that in in a number of places, right? That that this is bubbling up.Warren Bird — And that’s another thing about large churches. They are disproportionately bulging in not only the the children, Next Gen, but also in that 20-somethings age is is usually a sizable percentage of of, especially, newer large churches.Rich Birch — I was just with the church a couple weeks ago and they were talking about—and they’re a large church—and they were kind of thinking, they were like, I would say disparagingly about their own ministry. And they’re like, you know, young people just don’t want large churches. They they want a small, intimate thing. And I challenged them on that. Now I’m looking forward because when the study comes out, I can give them an actual stat.Warren Bird — Okay, okay, Rich. I’m going to tease another finding then.Rich Birch — Yes. Okay. Warren Bird — Because this I’ve I’ve sat and listened to your… And and tell tell us the name of the title of your latest book where you talk about different growth strategies.Rich Birch — Yeah, Breaking Breaking the 200 Barrier or 2000 Barrier is the this the title of the book I’m working on.Warren Bird — Wow. Okay. So so this survey that I’m doing actually has been done every five years since the year 2000.Rich Birch — Okay, yeah.Warren Bird — And it’s fascinating to see the same question, the answer every 2005, 2010, 2015, 2020, just before the pandemic, and now 2025 after the pandemic.Warren Bird — And one of the questions is, it’s an agree/disagree statement, that how important are small groups or teams for the Christian formation and discipleship in your church?Warren Bird — And the when it was first asked many years ago, it was right at 50%. Every single survey, it has inched up. And the last survey, it was 89%. And I thought, well, we’re not going to top that because you don’t get 90 or more percent in any survey.Rich Birch — Wow. Of anything.Warren Bird — But the responses so far, 92%… Rich Birch — Wow. Warren Bird — …give the highest rank to small groups, which translated is: you get bigger by getting smaller. And that intimacy that you were reflecting on, that’s what where people thrive. That’s the hub of discipleship. And that’s essential for the larger you get to know how to do that well. Plus, of course, that’s where so many of your lay leaders are developed and everything else.Rich Birch — Yeah. And and we, on ah from a practitioner point of view, we know that um like large churches have to get good at that. Like you have to get good at moving people into smaller communities. You’ve got to figure out how, you can’t, people will come for whatever you’re doing on the weekend, but they will not stick and stay long-term.Rich Birch — they They have to find a group of small, you know a small group of friends that they’re connecting with. My parents, most of their, ah my dad moved, I think, 23 times in his career, moved a lot and went to a bunch of different churches. I think like 18 different churches or something over the years, and mostly small churches. I’ve mostly worked in large churches.Rich Birch — And if I’m honest, they would never say it this way because they love me and they’re good parents. I always felt like they kind of looked down on the large church thing. They’re like, I don’t know. I don’t know. They, at one point we’re moving to Louisville, Kentucky.Rich Birch — And I said, you got to go to Southeast, at least try going to to Southeast and check it out. Just check it out for one weekend. They ended up getting connected there, stuck and stayed, loved it. And they would say too, and it’s a massive church, probably like it’s up there, top single digit, the largest church in the country, somewhere in that range. And it it they would say to this day, that was the church that they felt the most connected at, not the church of 200 people. You’ve we’ve got to get really good at that for sure. Rich Birch — Any other findings that are kind of interesting for us to kick around?Warren Bird —Yeah, what I did, Rich, before the surveys, I got a whole bunch of people together who work with churches and say, tell me what you think might be on the horizon that I can test for.Warren Bird — And one of the things Ithen worded questions to test for is are, is the locus of where future pastors, leaders, missionaries are coming from, is it is it less from the seminaries as points of origin? You know, I’m going to go to seminary and try to figure out what God has for my life. And more happening there in the local church. And and just for an example, if you take all the churches of 5,000 and higher in attendance that of ah have completed the survey so far, and you ask, do you have a residency program or equivalent? (And I give them a whole bunch of words because everybody calls it something different…) Rich Birch — Yes. Warren Bird — But designed to train future church leaders. Rich Birch — Right.Warren Bird — So far in the findings, 92% have said yes.Rich Birch — Wow.Warren Bird — And then when we said, okay, if yes, then how many people during the course of 2025 are you training? And the median is 15.Rich Birch — Wow.Warren Bird — Now, that doesn’t mean just really large churches are doing it. I also checked for 2,000 and up, 1,000 and up. And they’re all at different levels doing some kind of of serious ministerial training.Warren Bird — So this is pipeline, pathway, whatever you want to call it, that, you know, from to use the phrase of another church, starting with the irreligious person who comes and and finds a vital life-changing forgiveness relationship with Jesus Christ. And then if gifted, there is just no lack of steps you can take toward leadership if God’s calling should continue in that particular way – all the way towards a ministry residency, towards doing something vocationally full-time.Rich Birch — Wow, that’s incredible, 92%. That’s shocking to me, that’s surprising. That’s incredible for churches over 5,000. I wonder, one of the things I’ll look forward to when the study comes out is seeing how that gradiates with churches that are say at 2,000.Warren Bird — Right. And and that’s what we’ll do in the report.Warren Bird — For those who take the survey, by the way, they get the report first and…Rich Birch — Yes. What is that link again?Warren Bird — …and and but wait, there’s more. Those who take the survey get an exclusive webinar where we unveil it and do Q&A with us and special guests like Sam Chan there. And and and we’ve we’ve got a whole bunch of people lined up who are going to kind of ask the tough questions of the data. And again, it’s at bit.ly/largechurch2025. Rich Birch — That’s great.Warren Bird — And so, and so participate and then be the first to get these wonderful reports that we’ll do. Rich Birch — You know, that’s interesting because I, you know, I’m always looking for what are the behaviors at a kind of certain level of church that changes as they become larger. And um that’s actually that book I’m working on, that really is what it kind of is is based around. And one of them, there’s these eight different things that I’ve i’ve just seen. And and so I’m out talking to other church leaders. And one of them is they go from reactive volunteering to proactive volunteer growth. That like a church of a church of 800 or a church of 500 is like, oh, we need people for this. But then to really break that 2000 barrier, churches have to, they move to, or we see them move to, okay, actually we see that moving people into places of their gifting, their what’s kind of best for them. And also trying to find a way to create more space for more volunteers is a behavior that we see. Rich Birch — I wonder if in this one, as churches go from 2,000 to 3,000 to 5,000, there’s like, it’s just kind of that behavior even just extended all the way up through the kind of staffing experience where it’s like, hey, we’ve got to develop our leaders from within. That’s that’s amazing. That’s that’s incredible.Warren Bird — Yeah, it’s to me, it’s exciting.Rich Birch — Oh, for sure.Warren Bird — It’s it’s just thrilling to imagine the impact because frankly, last weekend of the people who went to a Protestant church, at least in the United States, um somewhat around half or more went to a large church. Rich Birch — Interesting.Warren Bird — And it’s where you cut do the cutoff for what becomes large. But this is a a small number of churches, relatively speaking… Rich Birch — Right. Warren Bird — 320,000 U.S. churches. And at least in the megachurch department, 2,000 and higher, they’re only like 1,800 or so. And then when you go into the thousand range, it it adds a chunk more churches. But this is a disproportionate number of churches. And if they get leadership development right, um the impact, the ripple effect to bless all churches and all communities has great potential.Rich Birch — Well, and this, absolutely, this has been um so much of the work that you’ve done over the years, which I think has been such a blessing to so many churches, is you have mined out these insights, these, that but then have become resources that then all of us can apply regardless of our church size.Rich Birch — So even down the road when the when the study comes out, if you’re not a large church, this would be a great study for you to read, to but to to to learn from.Warren Bird — Yeah. Yeah, and we will make it available to the public… Rich Birch — Yes. Warren Bird — …but it’s just those who take the survey at – did I mention it: Bit.ly/largechurch2025. And it closes for those who may be listening to this later: November 11th, 2025. That’s your cutoff for midnight, that night…Rich Birch — Midnight. Warren Bird — …whatever your midnight is.Rich Birch — Yep.Warren Bird — U.S. churches take the survey. So, but Rich, you know, let me just tell you some of the questions we’re asking. Rich Birch — Sure. Warren Bird — I’d love to get your feedback on, for example.Rich Birch — Okay, sure.Warren Bird — First, the stereotype of a megachurch, for example, is that they have this colossal sanctuary like like Lakewood Church, you know, the seats 16,000. But the reality is typically the largest venue, and we’re asking this, but I haven’t looked at it for this survey so far, is about 1,400, which means, you know, you have multiple campuses, multiple services and so forth. Warren Bird — Which leads to the question, is the is the spiritual commitment, is there any relationship between facility size and the amount of volunteering, giving, or anything else? Are there factors that proportion with the size of your largest worship venue? We’ll have some numbers on that, but Rich, do you have any predictions?Rich Birch — Well, um so I’m looking forward, this could be one of those areas where I have been giving bad advice, but I have I have been saying for a long time, 15 years, think smaller rooms, more more services, more campuses, rather than you know fewer. Rich Birch — And um the logic, I the reason why I say that is like, let’s say you take, um like my friends at Flatirons, they have 4,000 seats in their in their biggest room. You only, “only”, you only need maybe five or six people on the worship band. um You know, and that room only has, I think there’s, I think there’s only four entrances to that room. So you’ll only need maybe eight people to actually be like usher greeter people at the door.Rich Birch — Man, I want to see way more volunteer engagement than that. I want to see, you know, for 4,000 people to only have, say, a dozen volunteers, man, that’s that’s like the wrong kind of efficiency. I’d rather go the other way. Let’s have a smaller room. Let’s have eight rooms of 500 where then now we require a whole bunch of more people to be involved to make it happen, which is then going to drive all kinds of the other positive behavior around inviting and them being leaning in more, all of that.Rich Birch — So I would say, I think there’s a sweet spot. I think, you know, it’s, well, and I’ve heard that 14-, 1500 number before. I think it’s, you know, 500, 1000, somewhere in there. There’s like this interesting sweet spot. If I was going to guess, I would think as it goes dow… as it goes up, that kind of engagement and some of those participation numbers go down over a certain number. So that’s my prediction. We’ll see.Warren Bird — All right. Rich Birch predicts. We will you see what happens. All right. Let me ask you another one, Rich.Rich Birch — Yes.Warren Bird — There are a lot of definitions to the attractional model. And there are a lot of questions of people saying, you know, is the attractional model, they use strong words like dead.Rich Birch — Yes.Warren Bird — But but is it lessening? And if so, what is replacing it? And we’ve asked enough different types of questions about involvement and, you know, where’s your front door, primary front door, and that most newcomers come and all, that I think we’re going to be able to tease out which churches are strongly attractional and and how strongly they’re growing, versus which churches are not and how strongly they’re growing. And which churches are doing other things like, let’s say, community service emphases, justice emphases – how that impacts growth.Warren Bird — Do you have any prediction as to where you think it’s going to land when all these listeners of yours in large churches take the survey at bit.ly/largechurch2025?Rich Birch — Well, you got me on a bit of a high horse. I’ll try and I’ll try not to preach about the death of the attractional church, but I can say, so ah last year, I turned one of those numbers on my birthday that had a zero at the end that started for me to think like, okay, I’ve been in this for a long time. And one of the things that I’ve noticed in the people we serve is I do think when I started 20, 30 years ago, you could do things that were classically attractional. Like, and and we would have never said, we’re trying to entertain people. Like we were more spiritual than that. We would have never said like, put on a good band, be funny, have like a standup comic, do… Like we wouldn’t have said that. Although those were all the things we were trying to do.Rich Birch — And I actually think that worked, but I actually don’t think that works anymore. Because the people that we’re serving has changed. I’m convinced that the people that are coming in our front doors in every zip code in the country is more unchurched today than it was 20 years ago.Rich Birch — And so people are coming, they’re pushing through some sort of cultural resistance to be there. They don’t just stumble into church like they used to. Even…Warren Bird — Right. They’re choosing church over… Rich Birch — Yes. Warren Bird — …any number of other things they could have done on a Sunday morning. Rich Birch — Yes. And they’re…Warren Bird — And they’re coming find God.Rich Birch — Yes, they’re coming with actual questions. Like they’re like, I, my marriage is falling apart. My life is not doing well. Who is Jesus? Does any of this make a difference? And so, you know, the classic attractional model I would think is in decline. And that comes from someone I’ll introduce myself in situation where listen, I came from the attractional church movement. That is my background. That is my heritage. But I, that I think model has has shifted. Rich Birch — Now, It’s not like we’ve moved to repulsive church. It’s not like that works. We don’t want our churches to push people away. But I, but I, I, and I do think that there has been, I don’t know if you’re teasing this out as well. I have also noticed, man, a lot of our worship services, they look a lot similar.Rich Birch — I’ve been in, I think 22 churches in the last year where I’ve been like there on a Sunday in a church. Most of those churches north of 500, less than, well, guess there’s a bunch that are quite large, but north of 500. And it’s interesting how we’re, a lot of us are doing a very similar kind of participatory raised hands, come to the front, get prayed for – that, whatever you call that. That sure is a great band. And there is somebody that’s like, they know what they’re doing from a communications point of view, all that. But there there seems to be, I don’t know whether that’s just me, but it seems like there’s more homogeneity in the church and than I maybe even realized was there. I’m I’m not sure.Warren Bird — Well, at least… Rich Birch — So that’s what I would say.Warren Bird — …homogeneity in terms of experiential. And I think the pandemic, one of the silver linings is churches said, we need to distinguish what the value is in coming in person versus watching.Rich Birch — Yes.Warren Bird — And and you you can’t be hugged on on the… And and please don’t anyone hear me as disparaging the incredibly wonderful outreach by ah the the Internet that so many churches have with their digital ministries. But but to come in person, I can be hugged. I can I can be prayed over in person with somebody holding my hands to pray. I can tactilely, you know, take the Lord’s Supper, communion, whatever you call it, in person, in a way that that’s in community… Rich Birch —Yeah. Warren Bird — …that I just can’t do online by myself, even even with my family. And that’s that’s one of the many pulls for people coming back. And I’m hoping in the survey to learn a little bit more as to what is drawing people today in different aspects of a increased hunger for God.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I can see I can see that how, you know, there’s been a shift around that. And and again, super intrigued to see what comes out of – is there was there one last question that you, listen, you get to actually shape the questions that you’re like super intrigued. You don’t have to reveal the early results, but like you’re really looking forward to, I know that’s like picking which is your favorite children, I understand. But like, you know, are there any any other questions that you’re really hmm super intrigued to see what comes out?Warren Bird — Yeah. It’s just the whole idea of the comeback. I, we ask people, what was your worship attendance in 2019? Which would be, remember the pandemic was March of 2020. So this is well before anybody had in inkling of what was to come. And ask, what is the attendance in-person today? Total noses. And and to wonder, because the larger the church, typically, as I mentioned earlier, the the harder you were hit during the pandemic and the and the slower often you were to do the comeback.Warren Bird — So have they regained to where they were? And what is, first of all, so far 53%, limiting just, let’s say to megachurches, 2,000 and higher, 53% have come back at least 10% more than they were in 2019.Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.Warren Bird — But some have spectacularly, dramatically come back… Rich Birch — Right. Warren Bird — …three times the size, two times the size. Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.Warren Bird — And and I want to isolate those off. And there is a small group, but it’s still a definite group that has not. And they’re taking the survey.Warren Bird — And if that’s you, please take the survey. Rich Birch — We want to hear from you.Warren Bird — Because we want to say, OK, what’s happening in those churches that’s different from those? So so we’ll look across the spectrum of comeback. But if someone said, nope, the era of the megachurch is dead.Warren Bird — Oh, oh, oh. And the era of the people said, oh, megachurch is just a baby boomer phenomenon, you know, with pastors just getting older and older. And, you know, so far, the average pastor age is considerably younger, senior pastor, than when we did the survey five years ago… Rich Birch — Interesting. Interesting. Warren Bird — …which says there’s a whole new generation, at least enough of that generation of younger church planters or otherwise that are becoming large churches.Warren Bird — And I say church planters because from our survey five years ago, 82% of megachurches, 2,000 and higher, reached their size under the leadership of their current and founding pastor, same person. So I’m sorry, that’s a misstatement. Under their current pastor, the majority of which are founding pastors. Rich Birch — Okay. Warren Bird — But many people come into a church that’s 100 years old and you know for 100 years ministered effectively as a community of 50 to 75, and then just exploded under one pastor. Warren Bird — So um all that to say, I’m excited by the reaching of young adults, by the the apparent getting younger of the age of the leader and the explosive growth of some. And I haven’t correlated the explosive growth ones with the average age of the pastor, but we will do that.Warren Bird — And the more people who take the survey, the more I’m able to slice and dice in that way. So please, before November 11, 2025, take the survey. It’ll make a difference and it will pay you back big time in terms of data informed, wisdom that the Holy Spirit uses to help you make wise planning and strategic decisions.Rich Birch — Well, the thing, friends, we really do want you to take this survey. You really should be tracking along with Warren. And, you know, he does just such great work. And this is going to be a valuable resource. I know it’ll be the thing we’ll be chewing on for a long time, probably for the next five years until the next one comes around. And then we’ll be thinking about that one. So super helpful. Rich Birch — This is great. It’s interesting that whole thing you were talking about. i have I’ve wondered, I heard, this is probably two years ago on the economic side, they talked about the K recovery in some industries, that there were some that have done quite well and then some that are doing not so well. And just intuitively, that has been my experience as I’ve talked with church leaders, that there are still, like there are people that COVID is in their rear view mirror and they’re like, man, we are just like we’re up and to the right. Things just are going. But then there’s some church leaders that are still like licking their wounds and are like, man, this just is, we’ve not been able to recover and it’s not, it’s not going well.Warren Bird — Well, and and for some, you know, the the prime industry in their city tanked during the pandemic… Rich Birch — Yes. Warren Bird — …and there’s there’s been a massive departure. Or there was a leadership a change or there was, you know, something else that that could explain something that thwarted or or considerably slowed their growth and rebuilding impact.Rich Birch — Yep. Yeah, so good. So give us that link again and the timeline. Just so just give us a whole blurb.Warren Bird — Yeah, I might not have mentioned it before, but it’s bit.ly bit.ly/largechurch2025. That’s all one word. And between now and November 11th, 2025, and please don’t wait till the last, but I mean, you can, but but we’d love to have you be part. And we’d love just to bless you back with all kinds of helpful ah guidance and information and benchmarks and ratios and everything else if you’ll participate.Warren Bird — This will be, assuming we continue the way we are the largest ever study… Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s right. Warren Bird — …of large churches in the United States.Rich Birch — What, how long does it take if i’m if I’m preparing to sit down to do it? How much time should I set aside?Warren Bird — Okay. The average is just under 20 minutes. That’s a big ask.Warren Bird — However, on the opening page of the survey, click here to get a PDF. Many people hand it to their admin and say, hey, there are certain numbers, things you fill those in and I’ll fill in the rest and then you can key it in for us or whatever. So so um while it is asking a very knowledgeable person to to give input. It’s often shared around the office. But that 20 minutes, up to 20 minutes will pay you back big time… Rich Birch — Yeah, 100%. Warren Bird — …in in the feedback you get.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I just I just referenced that because I know you got to set time aside. This is not like…Warren Bird — Yeah and and I know that people have survey fatigue everywhere you go. You’re asked to take a quick survey, which is really not quick. And so I’m just being upfront and telling you what the average is.Rich Birch — Yeah, no, it’s good. And it’s super valuable, friends. And this this will help not only your church, but will help shape so many churches. We want to learn from you. You know, that’s really what this podcast is, trying to learn from other churches. This is a great thing. Rich Birch — Warren, where do we want to send people online if they want to track with you, um if they just kind of want to be in the the greater Warren Bird cinematic universe?Warren Bird — I am full time as a church researcher and writer. I probably post the most on LinkedIn. I’m pretty easy to find there to follow me. And and Rich, thank you for mentioning different books. And um that’s the most joyful thing that happens is somebody reads like “Becoming a Future Ready Church,” the latest book that Daniel Yang and Adelle Banks and I did, and then writes me an email. Just Google me. I’m easy to find. And says, I have a question or I’d like to tell you a story or whatever. So that’s the way to get even more connected with me.Rich Birch — Well, it’s an honor, privilege to know you, even for folks that aren’t watching the video. There’s Mike Slaughter’s book, “Unlearning Churches”, over your corner. And that literally was a book I read when it first came out years ago, and it shaped my own thinking. This is the thing that I was thinking this as we were preparing. I know I said this at the beginning, but I want to honor you with this. Your books are for sure the ones I recommend the most, like “Better Together”, “Hero Maker”, “Multisite”, “Church Road Trip”.Rich Birch — Like there’s a bunch of books that you’ve had your hand in, “Next”, that I’m always like – literally today, I was like, someone was talking about succession stuff. And I was like, well, you should buy “Next” first. Like before you do anything else, buy “Next”. That’s the book you should buy and go through that. And then, you know, think about your next steps from there. So and they have that consistently with your work. So you do such good work. Thank you so much, friend. So glad you’re here. And let’s get a bunch of people to do your survey. Take care.Warren Bird — Rich, you’re a good man. I always go out of my way to hang out with you or if we’re at a gathering together to sit down at your table or to be in your session. So keep up the great work and I look forward to the next time our paths will intersect.

Discover how money teaching can be impactful and transformational. Personal anecdotes highlight the importance of generosity in spiritual growth. Explore how churches like Crossroads use innovative approaches like the 90-Day Tithe Test. Liquid Church encourages practical financial workshops, while Pantano emphasizes giving as worship. Life.Church simplifies financial habits with memorable principles, and Saddleback offers extensive resources for financial freedom. Learn actionable tips for discussing money with clarity and purpose without awkwardness.

Lane Lowery, Executive Pastor at Warren Church, shares insights into leading one of America's fastest-growing churches. He discusses the church’s transformation from a single campus to six, emphasizing the challenges that necessitated a new global leadership model. Lane explains how the player-coach structure fosters local connection while enabling oversight across campuses. He also highlights the importance of essential practices and maintaining a personal touch in a large church setting, ensuring every member feels valued.

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re joined by Dr. Chris Vaught, lead pastor of Connection Point Church (CPC) in Missouri. Under his leadership, CPC has grown from 300 people in 2011 to over 2,500 today across multiple campuses. With a passion for raising up the next generation of kingdom leaders, Chris has built a leadership development pipeline and launched the Connection Point Leadership College to multiply impact far beyond the church walls. Is your church struggling to develop leaders and sustain growth? In this episode, Chris shares how the church equips volunteers, creates leadership pathways, and empowers everyday people to lead with clarity and purpose. Raise the bar for volunteers. // At Connection Point, volunteers aren’t just an extra set of hands—they are recognized as unpaid staff. Each role comes with a written job description outlining time commitments, responsibilities, and cultural values. This kind of intentionality elevates ownership, raises expectations, and ultimately increases the sense of purpose among those serving. Volunteers rise to the challenge when treated with dignity and entrusted with meaningful responsibility. Find your Timothy. // Each staff member should develop a “Timothy”—a person they’re investing in who could step into their role if needed. This mindset of multiplication ensures continuity and creates a built-in culture of mentorship. By identifying and pouring into potential leaders, churches develop stronger teams and deeper bench strength over time. Four-Step Discipleship Path. // Chris and his team designed a clear discipleship and leadership journey: Starting Point (intro to church/DNA), Life Groups (discipleship) or Serve Teams (leadership development), Equip Workshops (10-week leadership training), and the Leadership College (10 month internship program). This structured progression gives people consistent next steps for growth. Connection Point Leadership College. // At the top of CPC’s leadership pipeline is its 10-month internship program, designed for both future church leaders and marketplace leaders. Full-time interns spend two days a week in intensive theology and leadership training, alongside hands-on departmental experience. A hybrid model allows working adults to participate online. In partnership with Evangel University, graduates earn 12 college credit hours. Marketplace and ministry. // The Leadership College trains vocational leaders, but marketplace discipleship is equally critical. Leadership competencies are meant to extend into schools, businesses, sports teams, and families. This mobilizes the congregation to carry out ministry wherever they live and work, not just inside the church. Identify leadership types. // Drawing from Larry Osborne, Chris distinguishes between “big L leaders,” who drive growth and innovation, and “shepherds,” who nurture and care for people. Both are vital to church health. Place leaders strategically based on these traits to maximize impact and sustainability. Develop a leadership pathway. // The number one gift to give your Timothy is an investment in them. Sit down with them and talk. Ask how you can pray for them and care for them. Then give a quick update of what is going on and teach them some leadership competency. Help them build confidence in their leadership and celebrate with them. To learn more about Connection Point Church and their Leadership College, visit yourcpc.church 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! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: SermonDone Hey friends, Sunday is coming… is your Sermon Done?Pastor, you don’t need more pressure—you need support. That’s why you need to check out SermonDone—the premium AI assistant built exclusivelyfor pastors. SermonDone helps you handle the heavy lifting: deep sermon research, series planning, and even a theologically aligned first draft—in your voice—because it actually trains on up to 15 of your past sermons. But it doesn’t stop there. With just a click, you can instantly turn your message into small group guides, discussion questions, and even kids curriculum. It’s like adding a research assistant, a writing partner, and a discipleship team—all in one. Try it free for 5 days. Head over to www.SermonDone.com and use promo code Rich20 for 20% off today! Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Super excited for today’s conversation. I know I say that lots, but I really mean it today. We’re talking about an area that I think, frankly, lots of our churches should be leaning in on and learning more about and asking the question, how can we improve this area? Excited to have Dr. Chris Vaught with us. We got a doctor on the episode today.Rich Birch — He’s the lead pastor of Connection Point Church. This is one of the fastest growing churches in the country. And if I’m counting correctly, Currently two campuses in Missouri. They have a passion for raising up the next generation of kingdom leaders and they’ve developed the Connection Point Leadership College. Super excited to have you on the show today, Chris. Thanks for being here.Chris Vaught — Hey, I’m excited, Rich. So excited to be here and get to share a little bit about what God’s doing with us. And of course, we’re constantly learning from you and all the other great hosts or leaders you have on your podcast with you and just excited and humbled to be to be able to share a little bit of our story. So thanks.Rich Birch — Well, yeah, I’m, I’m excited to have you and to have, you know, I really do think this is going to be an area. I know a lot of us are wrestling with how do we do this well? How do we develop leaders? And, but, but kind of, you know, tell us a bit of the story, kind of set the table for us. Tell us about Connection and you know, what, you know, if what, if we were to come this weekend, what would we experience? Give us a kind of a flavor of the church. Talk us through that a little bit.Chris Vaught — Yeah, so Connection Point Church, we’re located in Jackson, Missouri. We’re about two hours south of St. Louis, down toward the Boot Hill, is what the area calls it, right. Just outside of Cape Girardeau. So there’s, between Cape Girardeau and Jackson, total driving distance around the church, you know, 20 minutes. We’ll probably lean in to around 70,000 people. Jackson itself is a small town of 15,000. Rich Birch — Okay.Chris Vaught — But it’s ah it’s very it’s it’s a very fast growing area as far as young families moving in. The school systems are excellent. Sports teams, Southeast Missouri University is over in Cape Girardeau. And so um so there’s a lot of energy in the area.Chris Vaught — And so for CPC, we’ve actually kind of designed all our ministries to fit the mode of this area. I’m a firm believer we should bloom where we’re planted, right? And so how can we get into this community? And over over the ah the past 14 years, that’s been our goal. Chris Vaught — We came here in 2011 and church was running about 300 the time. We had a traditional service and a contemporary service and was just trying the church was just trying to feel that piece out and what that looked like and how to get into the community.Chris Vaught — And God just began to put the pieces together in 2012. We we changed our name to Connection Point because we wanted the people in the community to know what our church was about. I mean, there’s churches, you know, on every corner in our area. And so what set this church apart? What is our niche? And we wanted it to be about connections. Rich Birch — That’s good.Chris Vaught — Number one, a connected relationship with Christ. And then, relationships with people. So ah throughout the past 14 years, that’s become our emphasis, right? Getting out in the community, making those connections, and then making sure that the relationship with Christ is real and personal, not just religion.Chris Vaught — We’re a very religious area. So we wanted really to build off of the relationship aspect. So from that, okay, so by 2019, we had bought 28 acres across town, built a new campus, and we moved into this campus with about 800 people in 2019. Rich Birch — Yeah. Absolutely.Chris Vaught — So we we made a lot of transitions from 2011 to 2019, and we’d grown from 300 to about 800. Of course, we all know what happened with 2020 and and covid. That all came four months after we built this brand new campus.Rich Birch — Oh no. Perfect timing. Perfect timing.Chris Vaught — I was literally teaching the membership class. We call it Starting Point…Rich Birch — Yeah.Chris Vaught — …to get new people connected to the church, when the phone call came into the church…Rich Birch — Yes.Chris Vaught — …that the government, the governing leaders of Missouri was asking the churches to stop meeting in public because of COVID.Rich Birch — Wow. Right.Chris Vaught — And I was teaching the membership class when that night, when that came in. I mean, I was teaching and my staff was in the back waving me down, said, hey, we just got a message.Rich Birch — Oh my goodness.Chris Vaught — I was like, are you kidding me?Rich Birch — Wow. You’re giving me a little PTSD here. That’s those are those are dark days, man. That was, you know, hard to look back on.Chris Vaught — They were, man. But you know what? Our income jumped 18% over the four months that we were shut down because our our people just built this building.Rich Birch — Right.Chris Vaught — They were scared we were going to lose it.Rich Birch — Right. Wow. They leaned in nothing like adverse advert. Uh, can’t say that word adverity to draw people in. That’s amazing.Chris Vaught — Yeah, they they jumped in, man. That was incredible. Came back. We came back actually, I think Father’s Day weekend or right after Father’s Day that June to back in-person services. When we came back, we came back with 600 people.Rich Birch — Okay. Yep.Chris Vaught — So building back on that foundation of 600, what God did next was absolutely phenomenal to us. So from 2021, we’d gotten back up to 1100. From 2022 to 2024, we doubled in size.Rich Birch — Wow.Chris Vaught — And today, if you came here this weekend, there’ll be there’ll be a little over 2500 people on the campus.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s incredible. Praise God.Chris Vaught — And three services, and then we have about 30 miles away, 10 months ago, we launched our first multisite campus. Chris Vaught — And I have to tell you, Rich, about this campus. It’s 30 miles away. Rich Birch — Yeah. Chris Vaught — It’s in the second poorest county of our state.Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.Chris Vaught — It’s in a town of 1,700 people, a county of 10,000 people. And God has blessed that little campusRich Birch — Wow.  Chris Vaught — And it’s been the largest church in the county since day one.Rich Birch — Wow.Chris Vaught — And they’re running about 350 in a town of 1700.Rich Birch — That’s amazing. That’s incredible.Chris Vaught — So we have this motto.Rich Birch — Praise God.Chris Vaught — We want see God do something only he can get the credit for. Rich Birch — Yep.Chris Vaught — And to be honest, right now, that’s that’s what you that’s what we’re seeing. But that’s the atmosphere you feel if you were to come on the campus this weekend. There’s just that anticipation.Rich Birch — Wow. Well, that’s incredible to hear. And, you know, it’s, it does seem like that kind of post COVID. I know it’s like, I don’t know at what point we’re going to stop saying that kind of thing, but like, it’s a big deal obviously. And, and it’s like an inflection point we all went through. And it does seem like post COVID there was like, they at one point they were talking about the K recovery that there was like, some churches have come out not doing well. They’re struggling. And there are churches like Connection Point that are accelerating. Rich Birch — And in like an odd sort of way, we look back and are like thankful for that time. We say something happened there that focused us. And we came back with, you know, even more, you know, drive and and all of that, which is amazing to hear. But I can imagine in the midst of all that kind of getting to where we’re we’re talking about today, talk, you know, developing leaders, trying to scale up. Every church has a problem finding leaders. How do i get people to actually take the ministry and run with it?Rich Birch — You’ve made some changes on this front that, you know, have really helped, I think, accelerate some of this growth. But why don’t you talk us through when what’s that look like for you in the last couple of years?Chris Vaught — Yeah, so coming in right just before COVID, we knew as we were growing, we just could sense, you know, hey, this is picking up. God’s given some good opportunities. We have to spread this out. we’re We’re in Southeast Missouri. Rich Birch — That’s good.Chris Vaught — This is not a hotbed for people who don’t move here to take on a position. We started thinking through and looking at the New Testament, too. You can only hire out so much, right? Because even though our church has grown fast, budget always comes up last. So you have to look at other avenues other than just, oh, I’ll hire another position. So we started looking in the congregation. We began to develop our own leadership pathway or pipeline to develop, not only volunteers, but our future staff. Rich Birch — That’s good.Chris Vaught — We knew we grew really fast, we need to hire from within, but we still couldn’t hire every position.Rich Birch — Yep. Right.Chris Vaught — So we started looking at our volunteers as almost as non-paid staff positions. And so creating an atmosphere of expectation of roles and responsibilities, and also the value of what they’re doing.Rich Birch — So true.Chris Vaught — That the kingdom is dependent upon all of us using our gifts and talents. And so we started this pathway. And at first it was simply a challenge to every staff member. You go find your Timothy, you go find one other person that you can invest yourself into—a volunteer—so that if on Saturday night, and here was kind of the criteria for us, if on Saturday night, something were to happen and you catch ah COVID, okay, we’re at that time period or the flu, could this ministry run the next day because of the person you have personally equipped to hold the ministry?Rich Birch — I love that clarity. Yeah, that’s so good.Chris Vaught — And we began putting those little pieces says together.Rich Birch — I love that. So sorry. That’s right. Sorry, you go ahead. I cut you off there. That’s so good.Chris Vaught — No, no, no. I was just saying that’s this so’s what we began. We began this pipeline, and that’s that was really the basic level at first. Every staff member finding that one Timothy, if you will, if you want to use that terminology, that could run that ministry if you were out.Rich Birch — I love there’s a lot of clarity there. I love that. Even just the practicality of like, hey, on Saturday night, somebody calls. Who can take this? Who can take your piece? I think that’s that’s so good. Break up a mindset for us. You talk about kind of, you know, use the phrase non-paid staff members. You’re setting a high bar for volunteers, like a high, high calling. Rich Birch — I think there’s a lot of staff in our churches who are like, oh, like I can’t ask that of a volunteer. I can’t that they’re not, they’re like paid to do other things. And like, man, they either, they are not good enough is the mindset problem. There’s no way they could do it. Or that’s way too much for me to put on them. Break that mindset up for me.Chris Vaught — Yeah, because we’ve tackled that mindset over and over and over again. Bob Russell, who who I consider to be a mentor in my life, he challenged me years ago, early on in this process. When you’re hiring staff, he would tell his staff at Southeast, if I hire you to to develop and to coach others to do, if I catch you doing, you’re fired, right? I mean, it was that kind of mindset.Rich Birch — Yes.Chris Vaught — And getting that across, first of all, to your staff. That it doesn’t have to be 100% of your ability. That our ministry, according to Ephesians 4, is to raise up the congregation to go do the ministry.Chris Vaught — And now let’s paint a bigger picture of why that’s important. If we have a church of 150 and you’ve got two staff members, you’ve actually got 150 priests of God.Rich Birch —Right. Yeah, I love it.Chris Vaught — A royal priesthood. You can do more if they all do 30% of what you can do, spread out over the multitudes, then you can give all week long. And guess what? You don’t have to ruin your marriage or your health in the process. We spread this out.Rich Birch — Love it.Chris Vaught — It’s tackling that perfect mindset. The other issues we had to tackle, and you mentioned it, is this, well, I don’t want to ask them to do this. People will rise up to the level of expectation.Rich Birch — So true.Chris Vaught — So what we began doing was, is we actually created job descriptions for every volunteer row. And in that job description, it may say, this will require you on a weekly basis, X amount of time. Here’s how you prepare. Here’s who you report to. Here’s what’s expected. And here are the values we want you to conduct yourself with. People respond well to that.Rich Birch — 100%.Chris Vaught — People need clarity. People need to know, okay, if I’m gonna serve on the usher team or the parking team or the worship team, here is the level of expectation. They know whether or not they can get into it. Rich Birch — That’s good. Chris Vaught — It clears up a lot of miscommunication. It makes people feel valued and you can do it in the right way with positivity and motivation.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I love the clarity of job descriptions, getting it all written down. I think is is incredible. So, you know, what that it started with this simple idea, a simple idea, hard to execute. I feel like, hey, you find a Timothy, Ephesians 4. But it’s more robust today. When you say pipeline, give me like a simple definition of that. How do you explain that to like somebody who maybe is struggling with it? Maybe a staff member, elder, leader type person. When you say, you know, leadership pipeline, what does that mean? What’s that mental model for you?Chris Vaught — Yeah, for us, we tell them we’re putting them on a pathway.Rich Birch — Okay. Love it.Chris Vaught — You’re here, but we want to put you on a pathway to help mature you and grow you and develop you and your skills that God has already given you, because that’s where you’re going to find fulfillment.Chris Vaught — That’s where you’re going to find the energy and the motivation to go long term. But this is this is a process of development.Chris Vaught — ah You know, we come to faith in Christ and we often talk about our salvation like it’s a done deal at one moment, one little prayer, one baptism, you know, now it’s done.Chris Vaught — Yes, we may be instantly brought into the family of God, but there’s a whole life of sanctification and discipleship and development.Rich Birch — That’s so true.Chris Vaught — And so painted is a picture of this exciting pathway that we’re going to be on. And these are just this is a part of your path. We call it the discipleship path. And we kind of just draw it out for our people. We show them, hey, we’re getting ready to take you on a journey. And it’s a lifelong journey.Chris Vaught — We got I got the concept from the Jewish concept of a disciple to a rabbi called a Talmud.Rich Birch — Okay.Chris Vaught — And one of the cool definitions that learned years ago on what is a Talmud, one of the definitions is a Talmud is the shadow of their rabbi.Rich Birch — That’s good.Chris Vaught — In the in the Middle East, they would actually say a disciple knew they had arrived when they were mistaken for their rabbi out in the community.Rich Birch — Oh, I love that. That’s so good.Chris Vaught — So think about we are to become like Christ. We should be mistaken for his character, his heart, his attitude, right? But in a much smaller sense, part of that process comes into how we operate in and through the church, how we use our gift sets. The church’s responsibility is to help put them on a path…Rich Birch — Yep.Chris Vaught — …to begin to develop what that shadow looks like.Rich Birch — How do you, so I love that. It’s a very vivid metaphor. What does that look like practically going from metaphor to like, okay, that sounds like the kind of thing I want to be a part of. I want to be a shadow. I want to I want to you know grow. How are you structuring that and and doing that at scale? I think it makes sense in the kind of rabbi, you know, a follower kind of thing. But you know, you’re you’re talking about, you guys have grown by hundreds, thousands of people in the last few years. How have you been able to, to make those two things work? A relational, you know, discipleship experience that is, that is deep, but it has some sort of structure to it. What’s that look like?Chris Vaught — Yeah, so so the structure is going to be as people are coming into church, are new here, are next steps, so we’re always pushing them to that very first next step, which for us is Starting Point. Rich Birch — Okay, yep. Chris Vaught — There they’re learning the DNA and we actually talk this language to them at that introductory night of us explaining, here’s who we are at CPC, here’s our DNA. And we give them that next step. What does that look like?Chris Vaught — For one, it’s maybe just joining a serve team. Now, not everybody’s ready to join something on a Sunday, but that’s a starting point. And we begin to teach these leadership competencies and explain to them, hey, there’s a path that we want to put you on.Chris Vaught — Then included with that serve team is something we call Equip Workshops.Rich Birch — Okay.Chris Vaught — These are about 10 week workshops. We do two to three times a year where people we market it to the congregation, to our serve teams. They sign up. We’re going to teach you about your circle of influence. How Replicate gave us this concept, um Replicate Ministries, and it’s helping them find their kingdom circle, right? Rich Birch — That’s good.Chris Vaught — Because everyone has a circle of in influence. And what does that look like as you use your gift sets to serve?Rich Birch — That’s good.Chris Vaught — And so our goal of then is to not only get involved in Sunday Sunday morning or so or weekly serving opportunities here, we want it to stretch beyond. If we’re going to reach our community, I need them and taking the same competencies onto their job. Rich Birch — That’s good.Chris Vaught — I need them to take the same competencies to the traveling sports teams, right, wherever they’re living their life out. Then the next step we introduce them to is our leadership college, Connection Point Leadership College, CPLC. And that’s a 10-month internship program where it is it is straight on leadership, skill, competencies. We tell them, we’re going to teach you as if you’re going into vocational ministry. But we invite people who don’t feel a call to vocational ministry because we tell them, we need disciples living out their gift sets in the secular world, not just inside the church.Rich Birch — That’s good.Chris Vaught — And so there’s two ways of coming into that college, which is one step of it. There is the on-campus intern, where you’re actually taking classes and practical ministry, shadowing, being involved in the ministries here on campus.Chris Vaught — But then we have a hybrid edition, which is online. And that’s for those who have to work a full-time job, can’t come on the campus, and maybe they’re wanting to learn the biblical leadership competencies, and apply them to the secular world.Rich Birch — That’s fascinating. I want to come back to the leadership college in a minute. I want to put a bookmark in that, but taking a step back to the serve team and Equip Workshops, talk to me about, like, I think some churches would come to the moment of, like, when they’re trying to get people in connection and connected and into some sort of discipleship relationship, and they would actually push more towards groups, you know, rather than teams.Rich Birch — Now, I’m not trying to I’m not trying to pick a fight here. Obviously, we want people to do both, but talk to me about that decision around, hey, we’re going to kind of go the team’s route and then add Equip. Because I think it’s a really interesting model of like, then add these workshops, which kind of drives some of that depth discipleship stuff to people who are serving, I’m assuming, but talk us through that.Chris Vaught — Yeah, so just for clarification, we do we do do life groups as well. But if it’s more for leadership development, we push them toward the serving.Rich Birch — Yep, that makes sense. Yep, that makes sense.Chris Vaught — Kind of like two different pockets, if you will. Rich Birch — Yep.Chris Vaught — And some are going to switch over to both.Rich Birch — Yep.Chris Vaught — Some will start and serve and eventually lead into a life group.Rich Birch — Okay, that makes sense.Chris Vaught — Others may start a life group and come over to a serve team. Life groups are going to be a lot more discipleship based while serve teams is discipleship with an emphasis on leadership competencies. Just because the faster we grow, the more we have to make sure we’re developing leaders not just attenders if you will. Rich Birch — Yeah. Chris Vaught — And discipleship carrying on that serving aspect. So if you looked at if if I drew my pathway out for you on this journey of course you go to Starting Point the next one is either join a life group or a serve team. Rich Birch — Yeah, OK. Yep. Chris Vaught — But then if you go into the serve team we’re going to really push you to these kingdom circles and circles of influence and then to the leadership college, if that makes sense.Rich Birch — That makes total sense. Yep. That makes total sense. Well, let’s talk about the leadership college. Like give me a bit more kind of framework for what that looks like. Is it literally like full-time internship, 10 months, 40 hours a week? Talk us through that.Chris Vaught — Yeah. So um first of all, we don’t make it easy to attend our leadership college.Rich Birch — I love it. We’re not going to make it easy. We’re not putting the cookies on the bottom shelf. Love it.Chris Vaught — We didn’t. And we say it up front.Rich Birch — Yeah.Chris Vaught — So if you go into this, you’re going into it with intentionality.Chris Vaught — One of the things I teach from day one is I can teach you competencies. I can’t teach you initiative. And so from the get go, this has got to be something you’re after, you’re coming after, right?Rich Birch — Right.Chris Vaught — Because this is the highest level of our training. So it is a full time intern is 10 months. You’re serving every weekend. You for the first six weeks of the internship, you get to go through a discovery phase where we’ll put you in every ministry department for a certain amount of time, let you get exposure. We believe you need exposure. After that, you got to pick a direction, right? Chris Vaught — And so from then on, you’re here every Tuesday and Wednesday all day. Rich Birch — Wow. Chris Vaught — And that those are very in-depth biblical, theological, as well as practical leadership courses. Every morning up until lunchtime in the afternoons, you’re in the department in which you’ve chosen. That’s the avenue that I’m feeling led toward. And you’re going to be working under the leadership of that department. You’re going to learn the skills of that department. You’re going to go to their meetings, their departmental meetings. You’re going involved in activities. And that’s probably where you’re going to serve on the weekends. Rich Birch — Right. Chris Vaught — Or through the midweek, depending on what it is.Rich Birch — Right.Chris Vaught — So now one of the beautiful things we partner with Evangel University outside of Spring… or in Springfield, Missouri. Rich Birch — Yep. They actually looked at our program and said, anyone that wants to come to school here or take online classes, if they go through that leadership program, we’ll give them 12 credit hours of of college.Rich Birch — Oh, wow.Chris Vaught — So there’s a bit there for the ones who are looking for more formal education. And we have students who will do that. We have many that just want the leadership competencies here.Chris Vaught — Some of them are going into vocational ministry and others, as I said, they’re they’re wanting to take it into the secular world. And part of our goal throughout the year is we tell them, we’re not here to convince you what your calling is. We’re here to equip you for whatever God calls you to do.Rich Birch — Wow. Give me a profile of the a kind of person or a couple, maybe there’s a couple different profiles of people that take that step into the the leadership college. Like is, is that, yeah, like give me a sense of some of the characters that you find in that, ah in that experience, if you know what I mean.Chris Vaught — You know, this is year number four for us. Rich Birch — Yeah. Chris Vaught — And it’s so interesting that it’s grown every year.Rich Birch — Yeah.Chris Vaught — Oh, and by the way, one thing I left out, I told you we don’t make it easy. Rich Birch — Yeah. Chris Vaught — They pay us $500 to join.Rich Birch — Okay. Yeah, yeah. That’s great. Cover the cost. Or not really. Chris Vaught — So they don’t get paid for this internship and they get all that back and resources.Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.Chris Vaught — It’s just a commitment, right?Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.Chris Vaught — But last year, it was primarily high school graduates or college age kids that were in our internship program. And we don’t know what the Holy Spirit’s doing. Chris Vaught — This year, we doubled enrollment. And half of the group, more than half of the group are non-traditional. They’re like, we have a husband and a wife who are both working side jobs on Mondays and Thursdays and Fridays and Saturdays, so they can do the internship together because they’re both seeking what God’s will is for them. So they’re taking a financial hit. And they’ve got children. I mean, they’re having to get childcare so they can be here all day on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.Chris Vaught — We’ve got others that are in their mid thirties up into their forties coming to the school. So we’re really watching God do something pretty unique because the the idea, this concept of growing and stretching… Rich Birch — Yeah. Chris Vaught — …is now reaching beyond just the college age. and we’re And we’re getting into really all age groups. The oldest intern right now that we’ve had was in 56.Rich Birch — That’s amazing. Yeah, it’s incredible.Chris Vaught — And he was so phenomenal, we hired him on staff after he graduated.Rich Birch — That’s great. Well, and we’ve seen this in other, you know, echoes of this in other prevailing churches like Connection Point where um there’s like a high bar and there’s like, and we’re really calling people to say, hey, why don’t you come join the mission? And people respond to that. And, you know, the ripple out impact of that is huge. It’s almost like, you know, there are churches that are struggling and they’re just trying to like, well, we’re just going to make it as easy as we possibly can.Rich Birch — And there’s something about that that actually repels people, ironically. Or maybe maybe attracts the right people or the wrong people, you know. And this idea of like, hey, we’re going to do something big for you. Like, it’s a lot of work what you’re talking about, pulling that internship together. But it also it’s ah it’s requires a lot from people. That’s ah you know that’s that’s incredible. Rich Birch — How do you identify like and call out…I get that it’s like, you know, people have to make that choice, but what are, what are, what are you doing? What’s your team doing to identify leaders to kind of help them take steps next in their, you know, in their leadership development, or is it mostly just kind of driven by them? They’re raising their hand.Chris Vaught — No, I mean, actually you apply for it. You have to go through an interview process.Rich Birch — Right.Chris Vaught — And and once we interview you then we kind of help navigate. Yeah, we believe you have the commitment level. You have the spiritual maturity for what you’re about to come into. You know we’re looking at your personality skills. You’re, you know, doing an assessment. And just to make sure, because it is a a commitment, right? And you don’t want to start, not finish. And and we will make sure you got the character for this. Rich Birch — Yep. Chris Vaught — Because when you come into a leadership school like this, everyone know, you know, everyone knows that’s one of our interns.Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.Chris Vaught — The your personal disciplines, your character, competencies has to be at a certain level. So we even start there with an interview process. Then beyond that, once you’re in the system, and we learned this from Larry Osborne, there are two primary sides of leadership in every person, right? You’re either going either going to be that what he calls a big L leader, that one that lead the charge, and you know they’re going to drive a ministry or an avenue. Or you’ve got the shepherd.Rich Birch — Right.Chris Vaught — And both are needed in the church. And one’s not better than the other, right?Chris Vaught — Your big L leader, they’re the ones that make things grow. There are two criterias to look for for that big L leader. One, can they make things grow? Everything they touch takes off. Rich Birch — Right.Chris Vaught — You know, they’re able to grow it. The second piece is, well, I love how Larry Osborne says, it says it’s the Tom Sawyer effect. And you know the story of Tom Sawyer. Can they can they make people paint the fence for them and thank them for it when they’re done? Rich Birch — I love that. That’s great.Chris Vaught — Can they motivate the people around them? Well, if they are, and we recognize that kind of skill, that then gives us direction on how to craft their experience.Rich Birch — Right.Chris Vaught — Where we want to emphasize them to be able really maximize those skills to be a big L leader. They’re going to lead a ministry. They may be potential future staff. They may go in a secular world, but they could really make an impact. They’re an entrepreneur, right? Chris Vaught — The shepherd, if we see that they have the caring gifts, that they’re not the big old leader. They need a system. They need the structure. They’re not going to create themselves, but everybody wants to be around them. They have a heart. They have a care. They’re loving. They’re prayerful. They’re very spiritually deep. That helps us be able to craft their experience in the leadership college.Chris Vaught — Because again, it’s not about us getting them to do something. It’s them to learn the competencies to be the best of what God has called them to be. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.Chris Vaught — And so we kind of kind of keep our eye on that and watch those metrics. Some of that comes through how they respond in classes. It’s how they serve on the weekends. It’s just what a lot of observation pieces as they go through the process.Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, that’s cool. So kind of related issue, but more, maybe less of the this the art part part of it, more the science. When you think of metrics or mile markers around this whole area, what are some of the the numbers that kind of come to the fore? Things that you think about like, oh, we got to make sure we’re hitting this. If it’s, this feels, or I know this is healthy when that’s happening. Do you have kind of metrics that you think about on this front?Chris Vaught — Mainly for us, it’s as as far as any kind of metrics is we’re watching as if the people are taking ownership and are they self-recruiting others, right?Rich Birch — Sure. Okay.Chris Vaught — If I have a ministry that’s self-recruiting, constantly growing, like for us, ever since COVID, our media outreach department exploded. We went from an average of 800 unique views on the weekend to now over 6,000 on the weekend.Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. Wow. Yep.Chris Vaught — So all of sudden we’re like, okay, we’ve really got to keep our eye on the digital marketing media aspect of our church, right? So we judge health by it. How big has that volunteer base grown? Are they replicating, right? I think right now we have 50 volunteers in that ministry. Rich Birch — Wow. Chris Vaught — Where they, with a full-time staff of three people, four people, four people. And so, you know, I can’t hire 50 people, but I got to have that kind of a base.Rich Birch — Right. No.Chris Vaught — Our kids ministry, you know, our church age dropped dramatically after COVID. It’s all these young families. So our kids numbers are through the roof. So can we, so what’s our volunteer ratio look like there? And are they replicating? Some of the metrics we look at is the volunteer ministry large enough that people can serve one and sit and worship in another. Rich Birch — That’s good.Chris Vaught — If the same volunteers are working every single weekend and they have no time to come and get fed themselves. Rich Birch — That’s a problem. Chris Vaught — And and even the ministry department leads, if they can never break away and come into a worship service and get fed themselves, that ministry is not healthy.Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah.Chris Vaught — They need more volunteers and the department heads need to be able to train their team lead who’s underneath them well enough to run a ministry for one service once a month to come into a worship service and get fed themselves. You know that’s just an example.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. So good. Well, this is a great conversation. There’s a ton we could talk about here, but just as we’re we’re wrapping up, if you were to coach, a maybe there’s a leader that’s listening in today and they’re like, gosh, like I know we’re at the place where we got to take that first step. We got to take the, hey, who’s your Timothy?Rich Birch — What would be some some advice you’d love to give? Maybe it’s like a pothole to avoid or like, here’s something, you know, that kind of early advice I would give you to to get as you’re getting the ball rolling on, you know, on trying to develop a leadership pathway.Chris Vaught — Yeah, straight up early on, whoever your staff is or your key volunteer leaders are, when they find that Timothy, tell them the number one gift they can give that person is time investment.Rich Birch — That’s good.Chris Vaught — Sit down with them, spend some time with them, and then lead into a competency. And it could be 15 minutes. We do this with our volunteer bases on the weekends. So they gather together for a huddle 15 minutes before their serving opportunity actually begins. And there’s only three pieces that you have to talk about there. One is caring for them. Hey, how can I pray for you? How can I care for you? Because remember, volunteers, it’s not just a job, though you give them responsibility to job, but you’re also a congregation. You’ve got pastoral care. Hey, how can I pray for you? Chris Vaught — Then a quick update of here’s some things going on. Just keep communication going. Here’s what we need to know for the day. But that third piece that I’m so big on, and you can do this sitting around coffee. It doesn’t have to be a Sunday morning huddle. It could be as you’re building the program. Just but then teach them some leadership competency. Rich Birch — That’s good.Chris Vaught — You don’t have to preach a sermon. It’s just bring that little competency to help them develop and build some confidence. So if you came to one of our huddles like this weekend for 15 minutes, they’re going check up on you. They’re going to share a win. Hey, here’s what God’s doing. Celebrate with them. They’re going to give them a quick little update.Rich Birch — That’s good.Chris Vaught — And then they’re going to share something like, hey, this weekend, our whole theme is we want to create hospitality. So whatever we do today, let’s just all be hospitable.Rich Birch — That’s good.Chris Vaught — And they’ll talk just quick minute about that, right? So as you’re building your teams, as you’re building your pipeline, that’s really all you’re going to want to replicate. Then however large you get, you just keep adding layers to it. But it’s really the same simple structure.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. That’s so clear. This has been great conversation, Chris. I really, really appreciate it. I feel like there’s a bunch more, even just there around huddles, we could jump in on maybe a future podcast. We’ll have you back on or your team back on to talk through ah that piece of the puzzle. Because I think there’s even that alone. I think that’s the thing so many of us, we’ve got to do a better job on or just got to do a better job on.Rich Birch — Well, Chris, I really appreciate you being here today. As we land the plane, if people want to get in touch with you or get in touch with the church, kind of track with your story, where do we want to send them online?Chris Vaught — Yeah, you want to send them to yourcpc.church. You can send a message to us just simply by email and info@yourcpc.church. course, you can catch us with that same handle on any social media site, and you can send some direct messages straight our way.Rich Birch — Love it. It’s great. Thanks so much. Appreciate you being here today, sir.Chris Vaught — Yeah, I enjoyed it. Thank you so much for the honor.

Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Ashley Lentz from Lutheran Church of Hope in Iowa. As the Connections Pastor at one of the largest and fastest-growing churches in the country, Ashley brings a wealth of practical insight into creating personal connection in a growing church. Struggling to connect new guests and help them take meaningful next steps at your church? Tune in as Ashley unpacks how her team prioritizes clarity, simplifies the path forward, and builds systems that still feel personal—without overwhelming people or staff. Offer more than one pathway. // At a large church like Lutheran Church of Hope, it’s easy for people to feel lost in the crowd. A website can’t be the only entry point. While it’s useful, relying solely on digital tools can confuse guests. People often want a conversation—not a scavenger hunt. Churches must create multiple, intuitive connection points beyond online portals. Four paths of the Hope Circle. // Lutheran Church of Hope staff uses an internal tool called The Hope Circle to identify where people are in their discipleship journey and help them take next steps. The circle starts with Seekers, for people who are exploring what Jesus is about. Next are Believers, identified as people who have heard the message and are into Jesus, but don’t know what to believe or do next. Followers have been transformed by Christ and wanting to actively live out their faith. Finally is a Servant Leader – a mature believer leading and serving others through their transformed life. Start with Alpha. // Ashley recommends Alpha as a go-to starting point for anyone in the Seeker, Believer, or Follower stage. For Seekers, it provides the foundational answers they need. Believers benefit from a supportive community. And Followers get a refresher and grow more confident in sharing their faith. This simple, effective course has proven to be a unifying tool across spiritual stages. Personal relationships at scale. // Despite its size, Hope prioritizes personal touches. The “New to Hope” area is centrally located, staffed with volunteers in bright orange vests, and offers a free t-shirt to first-time guests. Visitors fill out a connection card (paper or digital) and are invited into further conversation, tours, or ministry introductions. Automated systems send follow-up emails and texts, but staff personally respond to replies to ensure people feel seen and valued. The power of serving. // Serving is one of Hope’s primary pathways to connection. Volunteer opportunities—such as hospitality, communion, or the café—allow people to engage while they’re already attending worship. Serving builds natural community, makes a large church feel smaller, and creates discipleship opportunities in the context of teams. Ashley notes that service can be a more accessible first step than joining a class, particularly for busy families. Clarity is kindness. // One of Ashley’s key takeaways is that clarity is crucial. Large churches can easily overwhelm people with too many programs. Recently, Hope streamlined its discipleship offerings, moving some content online and focusing attention on core pathways like Alpha, Foundations, and Tuesday night programming. By simplifying options and communicating them consistently, Hope has made it easier for people to know what to do next. Metrics and insights. // Ashley has observed consistent patterns: from sign-up to actual attendance, about 20% drop off; and from week one to week four of a class, roughly 40% of participants fall away. To address this, Hope emphasizes shorter class cycles and practical on-ramps. These metrics help them refine offerings while staying realistic about engagement. Learn more about Lutheran Church of Hope at www.lutheranchurchofhope.org and email Ashley. 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: Risepointe Do you feel like your church’s or school’s facility could be preventing growth? Are you frustrated or possibly overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your building becoming obstacles in the path of expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt that you could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the community’s needs? Well, the team over at Risepointe can help! As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead you to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Your mission should not be held back by your building. Their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to incorporate creative design solutions to help move YOUR mission forward. Check them out at Risepointe.com and while you’re there, schedule a FREE call to explore possibilities for your needs, vision and future…Risepointe believes that God still uses spaces…and they’re here to help. Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Well, hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. I’m super excited for today. We’ve got a church that I’ve been tracking for quite a while and excited to have a leader from there on. But then I know this is an area that so many of our churches are struggling with, and it’s kind of like an area that you might not be aware that you’re struggling with. And so I’m hoping that we open up a discussion today to help that will move you to really make some changes that will ultimately see your church help people get connected to it. Rich Birch — Today we have ah Ashley Lentz. She’s the Connections Pastor at Lutheran Church of Hope. It’s one of the fastest growing in the churches yeah churches in the country with, I believe, seven campuses, if I’m counting correctly, in Central Iowa.Ashley Lentz — Yeah.Rich Birch — Iowa. Sorry, it’s early in the morning, getting my lips going here, friends, ah multiple smaller local sites and opportunities to join online. They actively partner with and support other churches through their Hope Network. Super excited to have you on the episode today, Ashley. Welcome.Ashley Lentz — Thanks, Rich. Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here and help in whatever ways I can and just share, share what we learn.Rich Birch — Nice. Why don’t, for people that don’t know, kind of paint a picture of Hope today, kind of tell us a little bit about the church and your role as a Connections Pastor.Ashley Lentz — Yes, you described Hope beautifully. We are located in the metro Des Moines area of Iowa. Rich Birch — Love it.Ashley Lentz — So Des Moines is our capital for those who don’t know. And like you said, we have seven campuses and a whole bunch of local sites, is what we call them, and partner with churches all around the country to simply help them do ministry and meet them where they are. Ashley Lentz — And so ah Hope is, we would call it a multi-site megachurch, right? But it very much feels like I’ve grown up in the Hope, what I would call the Hope system, the Hope Network. I did our middle school and high school ministry here and came back to be a pastor here. Ashley Lentz — And so um I think we do a really beautiful job of reaching people where they are and inviting them into ah something deeper, but also meeting them where they are and saying like, if this is where you’re at, like we will, we will meet you there and walk alongside you and wherever you are in your faith journeys.Ashley Lentz — So my role as a Connections Pastor is just that. I get to meet people where they are and help them navigate ah what is next in their faith journey. We worship at our campus, the larger campus here in West Des Moines. We worship about 7,000 in person weekly. And my favorite way to meet them as a Connections Pastor is truly to have one-on-one conversations.Ashley Lentz — And sometimes that happens you know during weekend worship. Sometimes it happens during the week at other things. um But that’s what I love doing is getting to know people, helping them find the next best step for them in their faith journey and making a really large church seem intimate, seem like a ah community that is for them and finding a place where they can really feel like they belong… Rich Birch — So good. Ashley Lentz — …not just fit in, but where they can belong here.Rich Birch — Well, for friends that have been tracking with for with me for a while, they know this is like a passion area for me. I’m super excited to learn from you, clearly an expert in the field. And you mentioned it, you know, one of your campuses is 7,000, multiple thousands in the other locations.Rich Birch — It’s a large church by all, you know, all, you know, metrics, probably the top 0.2 to 5% of churches in the country. ah And, you know, when a church like yours is attracting thousands of people coming through the doors every single weekend, you know, helping them take the next step can be difficult. And one of the misnomers that I, that bug me is I know that a church like yours is very good at connecting people. That is a part of the reason why you’re the size you are. But there are challenges that you run into trying to connect with people at scale. I love that you started with, I love to connect one-on-one. I’m like, how do you do that at a so church that size. But what are some of those challenges? Talk me through why is it so hard at scale to connect with people?Ashley Lentz — For sure. We do not do this perfectly. I’ll be the first to say that. And it’s important that anybody listening knows we do not have this completely figured out.Rich Birch — Sure.Ashley Lentz — I will just tell you where we’ve been and some of the challenges we faced and what we do in the midst of those challenges to just navigate them as best we can, because we’re still figuring things out too.Ashley Lentz — One of the biggest struggles that we have is communicating effectively. When you have the the size of staff that we have, and by no means do we have a massive staff. I think many of our staff, people would tell you we’re probably understaffed. We could always use more. But we have so much programming. A lot of it is volunteer led. I help lead our women’s ministry and I have women facilitators leading those classes.Ashley Lentz — But we have things happening every day of the week in every ministry area. So it is hard to effectively communicate where I want people to plug in. Because it’s easy to say, hey, check out the website. Everything is listed on there. But really quickly, people get overwhelmed by that. Rich Birch — So true.Ashley Lentz — And that’s one of, again, that’s one of the things that love is I tell people, come talk to me. Some people love that. They’re like, yeah, would love to sit in chat. And other people are like, no, let me just navigate the website and figure it out on my own.Rich Birch — Love it. Yes.Ashley Lentz — But when you have so many things, they’re all great. It is hard to effectively communicate. Here’s what we find most important. Here’s what we would say. Start here and then do these kinds of things.Ashley Lentz — Prescribing a discipleship journey is really hard. And probably not effective because everybody’s on a different journey. Rich Birch — Right. Ashley Lentz — So we do like to offer, like we just have different offerings and I get to help people navigate season of faith, season of life, and what might meet them where they are right now and be an effective discipleship pathway for them. Yep.Rich Birch — Okay. I’d love to unpack that a little bit more. You talk about, and there’s a great description. We’ve got lots of different things going on, lots of different ministries, ah and but we’ve got to simplify it. You didn’t quite least say that. You said, we got to start here. We have to you know make it kind of really obvious or have pathways. What does that look like in practice? Help us understand how you’re doing that. Ashley Lentz — Yes. One of the tools that we use, and it is very much an internal tool is what I would call it. We call it the Hope circle. And it is what I would call a discipleship tool or discipleship pathway. And if I were to say that to our congregation members, they would really have no idea what I’m talking about. It is very internal. But it’s helpful to identify where people are on this Hope circle. Ashley Lentz — And so the circle starts with being a seeker. At a church our size, we have people every weekend who have zero idea what the church thing is about. They’ve maybe never been introduced to Jesus. Someone just invited them to church. They maybe knew they needed church and walked in the door, but have no idea what to expect. And so they are seeking something that has been missing in their life. And so ah helping people identify if that’s where you are, here are kind of the very preliminary places that would be helpful for you to start plugging in.Ashley Lentz — As we move around that circle, we get to believers, people who are like, okay, I’m bought into the Jesus thing. I’ve heard the message. I believe. Now what? Like, I I want to understand this better. Like, I believe in Jesus. I believe in God. Like, I’m here for it, but I don’t really know the things. So where do we go from there and how do we help them then move into like being super excited about Jesus? Like, I don’t just believe like I’m on fire for Jesus. I’m a follower, right? Like I am, I am all in my life looks different. I’ve been transformed. How do I follow him? And then how do you serve people in that arena too? Because that’s going to look different than somebody who’s come in as a seeker looking for Jesus and somebody who’s on fire for Jesus. So how do we move them around the circle?Ashley Lentz — So it’s seeker, believer, follower, and then kind of the last part of our circle is servant leader. How do we move them then into serving and letting the transformed nature of the gospel pour out of them into the world around us?Ashley Lentz — And I would say our secret sauce here at Hope is we love volunteers. Like as we move people around the Hope circle, I and my colleagues, we want to equip people to lead. Rich Birch — That’s good.Ashley Lentz — So being a servant leader inside these walls, but also outside these walls is really like, that’s what’s attractional to people is is letting them know like you’re on fire for Jesus. Go tell everyone about it and serve in the arena you find yourself in, whether in the church or outside the church.Rich Birch — That’s good. So how do you, how do you help people self-identify that? What’s that practically look like for folks that are at the church? How do you help them? And um folks, we’ll, we’ll put the Hope circle in the show notes. You can look down there. You can see it there if you’re, if you want to see that as a tool to kind of visualize that. But how do you help folks self-identify where they might be in that process? Or is it purely, they got to talk to somebody?Ashley Lentz — No, it’s not. I would love to say, please just talk to me, but you’re right.Rich Birch — Yeah. Yes.Ashley Lentz — With 7,000 people worshiping on a weekend, there’s no way.Rich Birch — Yeah, I can’t do that.Ashley Lentz — Even if if everybody on staff talked to some people. We, I’ll talk about this as kind of like on ramps or pathways.Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.Ashley Lentz — One of the best places for people to start as a seeker, a believer, even a follower is the Alpha course. I’m sure you’re familiar with Alpha course.Rich Birch — Absolutely. Yep.Ashley Lentz — We love Alpha here at Hope. And Alpha does such a beautiful job of if you are a seeker, it gives you the foundation that you need to step into what’s next.Ashley Lentz — If you’re a believer, it’s going to connect you to community, which is a really important part of discipleship. If you are a follower, like you are bought in and you are learning the things, we tell people Alpha is a great place to brush up on the basics, but also get plugged into community. So would say one of our biggest on-ramps is Alpha. Ashley Lentz — And then from there, this is kind of like my bread and butter in my role, is taking people as they finish Alpha and helping them self-identify what’s next. Coming out of Alpha, am I ready to serve? Is that like, am I on fire? Am I ready to come back and host Alpha or step into a different service opportunity? Do I need more basics? Did Alpha spark in me like, oh, maybe I don’t know as much about the Bible as I want to. Do we direct them back to a Bible class and learning like the foundations of a Bible.Ashley Lentz — This fall, we’re trying something new called Foundations. it’s a three-week class. The first class is, what’s my Bible? How do I read it? Second class is, how do I pray? And the third class is identity, like what God says about you. Rich Birch — That’s cool.Ashley Lentz — And so there’ll be people who come out of Alpha, yeah, who we say, maybe Foundations is next for you. Like, let’s Let’s really get some of these foundational pieces put together. up We also have a ton of just general classes, right? Like if you want to study ah spiritual disciplines, we have a class for that.Ashley Lentz — If you want to really dive into the narrative of scripture from Genesis to Revelation, what is the story that’s being told? We have a class for that. We also outsource resources. So I’m always always directing people to BibleProject.com and other things that do a really good job of walking people through some of these basic parts of discipleship, Bible knowledge, prayer knowledge. How, how do I get plugged into community? These are the questions we continue to ask. Ashley Lentz — And people can self-identify. I like, I do like directing people to the website. If you’re excited about community or getting plugged into a small group, check the website. There’s a page for small groups. Like we will help you with that.Rich Birch — Right.Ashley Lentz — By far and away, the best way we have found to get people connected is personal invites and personal relationships. I can’t personally do all of that. It is our congregation that does that for one another. And that is super beautiful to equip people who are on fire for Jesus to invite their neighbors and their colleagues, and to help them to share their story and say, here was here’s what my discipleship journey looked like. And I’d invite you to check out Alpha or this class or come join our small group and see what it’s like.Rich Birch — That’s good. Yeah, I love that you’re, you know, stressing that. I think there might be people that are surprised who are listening who would say, you know, here’s a person talking, you know, a large church, really stressing personal relationships. Unpack that a little more a little bit more. How do you practically cultivate those personal touches at scale? How do you encourage that beyond, you know, just, you know, you doing that or a small group of people doing that?Ashley Lentz — Yes, ah we build teams. And everything that we do, we build volunteer teams. So if you walk into Hope on a weekend, and this is true of any of our campuses, there will be a New to Hope area with volunteers who are clearly marked. They they wear bright orange vests here at our West Des Moines campus. You can’t miss them. The vests say: “New to Hope?” And we clearly tell people, if you are new, we love to connect with you. Ashley Lentz — They can fill out an online form. They can fill out a paper form. They can have a conversation with a real person. But those people every week are being followed up with personally um by staff members, by volunteers. They are being checked in with because we so deeply believe in personal relationship and personal invitation. Ashley Lentz — Same thing with people who are just getting involved.They might not be new to Hope, but the fall is a great example of getting connected, right? Like rally weekend is coming up for us this weekend where all of our fall programming kick kicks off. So we have a ministry fair where we will have tables in our atrium and invite people to stop by the tables and really get to know the leaders leading those ministries or the volunteers involved in those ministries and ask your questions. Rich Birch — That’s great.Ashley Lentz — Some people, again, some people won’t stop, right? Like they like, I don’t want to have a conversation with anybody, which is why a website’s a great tool. We have clearly marked women’s ministry, men’s ministry, general adult classes, everything’s on there. But if you are excited about what’s next and making a large place feel small, the best way you’re going to do that is by a conversation with someone or an email correspondence.Rich Birch — Love it.Ashley Lentz — But yeah, really having pointed conversations about where you’re at in your faith life and what you’re looking for.Rich Birch — Okay, let’s deep dive on that. You talked about some stuff there that I’d love to double click on and hear a little bit more about.Ashley Lentz — Yeah.Rich Birch — So talk us through, if I’m if I’m a guest that comes, um talk us through, I arrive at the New to Hope, I see. So like, give me a sense of like, how many people are there? What happens when I arrive there? What are they going to ask me to do? How do they get me connected? I’m assuming I fill something out. Maybe I get a gift. Then what happens? You know, kind of talk us through what the the experience of someone who chooses to self-identify, you know, through the New to Hope experience, what’s that look like?Ashley Lentz — Yes. Yes, I love this. Our New to Hope area is in the middle of our atrium. So we have our building is kind of, the worship center is obviously like big and there’s it’s kind of the main part of our building. But the atrium is very clearly when you come into the building, you are in the atrium. And so it’s a big old signs, bright orange. When you see that, you will see very friendly volunteer faces – usually like three or four and probably a couple of staff people lingering in that general area every single weekend, every single service. Ashley Lentz — And it’s really funny, Rich, just this weekend, I was walking around the building and I saw a family. And it was a young adult woman and her parents. And they walk into our building. And you can tell when people are new because they just kind of stop and look around.Rich Birch — A hundred percent. A hundred percent.Ashley Lentz — Like they don’t know where to go, right?Rich Birch — Yes.Ashley Lentz — So I walked up to them and I said, hey, can I help you find anything? And they’re like, we’re brand new. We have no idea what we’re doing. And I so I introduced myself. And I said, here here’s where we’ll start. We’ll start at New to Hope. And so I had her fill out a connection card. We have paper connection cards, like a postcard. And it is name, address, email address, phone number. People can follow it as much or as little as they want. But I tell them, if you want us to get in touch with you, I need you to write your email and I need you to write it legibly. Rich Birch — Love it.Ashley Lentz — And then they can opt in for our weekly newsletter, right? Like that’s and then there’s a blank space that says, what are you interested in? What do you want more information about? Some people fill that out, some people don’t. But that’s, they can fill it out virtually. We have little tablets at the New to Hope or they can fill it out on paper. And then what we do, we give them a free Hope t-shirt and we tell people in announcements, like if you’re new, stop by the New to Hope area. We’d love to gift to you with a free Hope t-shirt as a way of saying thanks for being our guest today. Ashley Lentz — So they get a free Hope t-shirt. And then I always ask them, can I help you find anything? Would you like a tour of the building? Like, I personally walked around this family this weekend. She was a young adult woman who had just moved here. And she said, like, where would I do young adult things? You have young adult ministry. And I said, yes. And I said, it’s not in the worship center. It’s in this, it’s in our chapel. Let me walk you around and orient you. Rich Birch — So good.Ashley Lentz — So when you get here on a Thursday night for, for that, then you know where you’re going.Ashley Lentz — That’s what our volunteers will do for people too. We, I want people to feel seen, right? As It’s a large church. You don’t want people to walk in without being seen or walk out without being seen.Rich Birch — So good.Ashley Lentz — So yes, we I say hi to everybody that crosses my path. And some people purposely put their head down and don’t want to be said hi to. And it’s like, you’re in church…Rich Birch — That’s okay. Yeah.Ashley Lentz — …you don’t have to say hi back.Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.Ashley Lentz — But if you cross my path on a Sunday morning, I’m going to say hi to you because I’m truly glad that people are here and I want them to know that.Rich Birch — Yes. Okay, that’s that’s fantastic. When So let’s say I come, I fill out, let’s say i’m I seem eager, maybe like that family, I fill out all the information. I give you my my mailing address, my email, my phone number, the whole thing. What then happens from there? What’s my experience? Do I get certain amount of follow-up? So what all happens at that point?Ashley Lentz — Yes, our we have a team that that does follow-ups.Rich Birch — Yep.Ashley Lentz — So those all go, we have, I would call it a track. They’re going to get an email right away. If they fill out a card on Sunday, they’re going to get an email on Monday that says, thanks for stopping by New to Hope.Rich Birch — Love it.Ashley Lentz — And generally that’s a generic email. It will have their name in it, right? So it seems like it’s personal. And it comes from ah Pat Quaid, one of our pastors here. um He’s been on staff for like 20 plus years. He’s incredible. Ashley Lentz — And so Pat will say, you know, we’re glad. Thanks for stopping by New to Hope. And generally here’s some information. If people put on the card that they want specific information, he will put that in the email as well.Rich Birch — Okay, yep.Ashley Lentz — Then I believe there are a couple other follow-up steps past that. We can send text messages. And so if people have put in their put their phone number down, they’ll get a text message later in the week that simply invites them back to worship.Ashley Lentz — It just says, hey, hey, Rich, this is Ashley from Hope. I just want to say I’d love to see at worship again this weekend. Reminder service times are…, or something like that. So they get a couple follow ups past that to know like we actually care.Ashley Lentz — While it’s automated, it also comes from real people. Rich Birch — Right. Ashley Lentz — So the system is in place because we’re such a large church.Rich Birch — Yep.Ashley Lentz — But if people text back, like I get those text messages back through an app, right?Rich Birch — Right. Right.Ashley Lentz — Like I’m, I have good healthy boundaries. ah Nobody has, you know, like I’m not texting 7,000 people at a time. Rich Birch — Yeah. Ashley Lentz — But we can personally respond to these people and answer questions that they might have.Rich Birch — Yeah Yeah. I love that. So friends, I want to underline a bunch of things that Ashley said there, because this is best in class practice that we’ve seen in in other contexts. You know, the idea that the, you know, New to Hope is like in the middle of the atrium, it’s super obvious. It’s that orange. You’ve got lots of, you know, volunteers and staff there. The t-shirt I love, the free gift. People, you know, ah too many churches will say like, if you want to get connected, drop by the connection kiosk. That’s like way too, people are not interested in getting connected yet.Rich Birch — They’re like just ah new. And so, but they will stop by and get a free T-shirt. It’s fantastic. I love that there’s multiple follow-ups. You wouldn’t imagine how many churches drop the ball there. they go They do everything else, but then they only follow up once or they, because they don’t want to bother people. I’m like, we’re talking about trying to get people connected to the kingdom of Christ. We’ve got to follow up with them. Ashley Lentz — Yes.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s, that’s so good. There’s so much, so much good there. Rich Birch — Okay, pivoting in a different direction. So, there’s a dichotomy, false dichotomy of in the church world around, we want to get people connected to teams or to groups. You know, we, we, and ultimately want to see them connect to both. And I think that’s the best practice. We want to get them there eventually, but it’s hard to point them towards both. What’s your thoughts on that? How do we, if if you were trying to kind of move people in an ideal direction, teams or groups, what’s that look like? What’s your experience been like when you’re trying to get people connected?Ashley Lentz — Yep. I would tell you, we ask often around here, what does it look like for someone to be engaged? What is an engaged church member? Like, how do you define that? Rich Birch — Yep.Ashley Lentz — And I’m not going to quote the research because I can’t remember if it was Barna or Gallup, but it was one of the two. A few years ago released that a highly engaged church person, the research is that they attend church once a month. That’s a highly engaged church person… Rich Birch — It’s true. It’s true. Ashley Lentz — …in our society. And so to to engage them, like the task of discipleship is so interesting because to say like, if I’m highly engaged, that means I’m coming to church once a month. To ask them to do anything beyond that means you’re like a super duper, highly, highly, highly engaged person, right?Rich Birch — Right. True.Ashley Lentz — So one of, I call this maybe ah another secret sauce, secret weapon, is I love to invite people into service opportunities as their kind of pathway to getting more connected. What people undermine in service opportunities, and by service opportunity, volunteer opportunity, I mean like our hospitality team or our communion serving team or the kitchen team.Ashley Lentz — We have a cafe where 100% of the proceeds go to missions. Somebody’s got to make that coffee, right? Like I invite them into these teams because I know that they will already be here for some of some of that time, right? Like if you’re coming to worship and I can get you on a team that greets before worship, I’m capitalizing on you’re already coming to worship.Ashley Lentz — But number two, you are going to be in community. Rich Birch — So true.Ashley Lentz — You will start to have great conversations with these people in community. You’ll start to get to know faces, right? Again, large place will start to seem smaller. Discipleship will happen in the context of volunteer teams without me ever teaching a class. It will just happen naturally.Rich Birch — Yep.Ashley Lentz — And so I think we forget that that’s a really great place to get people plugged in. Rich Birch — It’s so true.Ashley Lentz — And then is it is an on-ramp to anybody who shows up in the in this space and says, I just want to meet people. I want to get connected. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so true.Ashley Lentz — They might be in a season where they want a class, but I’m a young mom, right? Like I got two little kids. It’s hard for me to get here on a weeknight for six or eight weeks to do a class. A really good invitation might be, well, if you want to get connected, get to know people, you love greeting. Like you love talking to people. Why don’t you be on our greeting team? You’re already coming to service. Your whole family can do it.Ashley Lentz — And discipleship will happen in that context in such a beautiful way… Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so true. Ashley Lentz — …that that I love introducing people to volunteer opportunities.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I would say that for sure we’ve seen that as a trend in lots of prevailing churches like yours. You know, I would say particularly post-COVID, I think there has been a stronger emphasis or emphasis, depending on how you say it, to, you know, move people towards serving opportunities as like, a you didn’t say it this way. I’m saying it, but like as a primary path. Or like a let’s let’s take a first step there ah because of all the stuff you talked about. You know, we can get people on a schedule. We can yeah you know, there’s there’s something about the kind of envisioning we do in teams where we’re like pouring in like, hey, this is what Hope’s about. This is what Hope’s about that doesn’t necessarily happen in in in groups. So yeah, that’s that’s great. Rich Birch — Curveball question. We didn’t talk about ahead of time. Hopefully you can take a curveball, Ashley. I’m sure you can. You’re an incredibly smart person. What are the metrics that you think about in this area? Like, are there numbers that you reflect on that you like come back to you time and again that somebody asks you about regularly? What what would be some of those metrics that you think about?Ashley Lentz — What a good curveball question. Yes. Here’s what is fascinating to me, as somebody who does discipleship and gets people connected. I know, and this is specific to our context because these are numbers that I have crunched.Rich Birch — Yep, yep.Ashley Lentz — We can have really good intentions with groups and classes, but I will tell you that from sign up to show up, right? So if you’re promoting a class, amount of people who sign up versus the amount of people who show up just automatically will drop 20%. Because people have really good intentions.Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, it’s true.Ashley Lentz — But when it comes to coming to class, you’re going to lose about 20%.Rich Birch — Yeah. It sounded so good at church on Sunday to sign up for that class, but I did not actually come in. Yeah.Ashley Lentz — Yes, so that being said, the people who show up to your class, you’re already looking at 80% of people who are gonna come. But we’ll we’ll call that 100% of people who are showing up.Rich Birch — Yeah.Rich Birch — Yeah.Ashley Lentz — From week one to week three or four, you will drop 40% by week four.Rich Birch — Oh, wow.Ashley Lentz — I see this consistency, consistently across discipleship at Hope and and the groups that we do.Ashley Lentz — And so we have also tried to build Alpha. I would tell you is probably the only exception. Alpha, we do Alpha in nine weeks here at Hope. But everything else we have tried to build in three or four week chunks because we just know that by week four, you’re gonna lose half your class or so about about anyway, right?Rich Birch — Oh, that’s a good insight.Ashley Lentz — So we have great intentions with six or eight week classes. And I love to teach the Bible in six or eight weeks. I also know that for people’s schedules, they see a six or eight week class and that’s daunting. So to do things in three or four week chunks is really, really helpful. And those are some of the metrics that I keep in the back of my mind.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Yeah. And you could see that, right? It’s like better to have two three-week classes than one six-week class. You know, you kind of re-up like this is part one, part two, how do we move people along? You know, that’s, you know, that’s fantastic.Rich Birch — Well, let’s say you’re at a conference and someone is, you know, pulls you aside and they’re like, Ashley, oh, you’re the connections person from Hope – you guys do such a great job. What’s the one thing that you think I should do to make it easier? I’m sure you give out like common advice to somebody, to churches, church leaders around like, Hey, here’s the thing you could do to make it easier for people to get plugged in.Ashley Lentz — I would tell them clarity is kindness. Rich Birch — That’s good. Ashley Lentz — Be clear about what you’re asking people to do or or where you want them to get plugged in.Rich Birch — That’s good.Ashley Lentz — Yep. If that’s a conversation, be clear that like step one is a conversation. If it’s Alpha, be clear that Alpha is like the thing you want people to do. Clarity is kindness. Make sure your website is clear. We’re not perfect at any of these things by any means, but…Rich Birch — Sure. Yeah.Ashley Lentz — …the more clear we can be about where we want people to go, what we want them to do, what we know works. That’s a really loving thing to do for people is just be clear.Rich Birch — It’s so true. And, and I know that’s like an, that’s like a journey, not a destination. Like we’re clarity is something we keep working on. We have to keep refining, keep making it easier. I think even in this, that’s part of why I was double clicking on theNew to Hope kind of process. Cause I’ve, in other contexts I’ve talked about that, that, that piece of that. I think every six months you got to look at it again. Okay. What can we do to make this easier?Ashley Lentz — Yes.Rich Birch — How do we make it easier for people to connect? Can you think of some areas where you’ve had to gain more clarity? Where like we thought it was clear but then, no, it wasn’t clear – we had to change it and and make it a little more clear.Ashley Lentz — For sure, I will tell you, we kind of touched on this at the very beginning. We offer so many things as far as adult discipleship goes here at Hope, specifically even just our West Des Moines campus, ah that it’s kind of unclear where to even start.Ashley Lentz — So one of the things that we have done in the last year is really kind of cleaned up what our fall and winter adult discipleship schedule looks like. So that when people say, okay, I’ve already done Alpha and maybe I already took that class, that we kind of have a very clear trajectory for them depending on where they find themselves in their season of faith, season of life. Ashley Lentz — So we, Foundations is a good example. That will happen each semester. It’s kind of the foundational course. Here’s where you start. Then it’s Alpha. Then we then there are Bible classes and prayer classes, if that’s what you’re looking for next. Small groups. We always have a small group kind of class to help launch small groups. Ashley Lentz — But we cleaned up a lot of what I would call white noise around that. So people say, like, what do I do? As a team, we clearly know: this, that, and the next thing, if you’re looking for a prescriptive track. Otherwise, iI got a million women’s groups meeting. There’s a million men’s groups meeting. I can point you in that direction too. Rich Birch — Right. Ashley Lentz — But we’ve cleaned up a lot of that white noise to say, generally, this is what we’re offering. It’s going to continue to happen in kind of a cycle, a semester cycle. And so it just makes sense.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I know so many, so many models, you know, churches, every seems like every five years, it somebody comes out with some new approach to cleanliness and clarity.Rich Birch — And people are like, Oh, this is like the, you know, it’s Highlands’, you know, step one, step two, or, you know, 101, 201, 301. Or it’s like, you know, Saddleback’s run the bases. Or, you know, but the, the foundation of all of that is we’ve got to be super clear. We’ve got to make it as clean as possible. I feel like we cleaned up our schedule is like Des Moines nice for like, we cut a bunch of stuff or like, what did we do? Like that cleaned up. What does that mean? Like you, you are still doing everything, but we’re focusing people’s attention on just a few things? Is that what that means?Ashley Lentz — Yes, we did get rid of some things and it’s not because they weren’t good.Rich Birch — Yeah. Right.Ashley Lentz — We actually moved some of them online. We said people can take this online at their own pace. It will always exist. It’s good stuff. Rich Birch — Yeah.Ashley Lentz — But let’s be really clear about what we want people to jump into in the fall… Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Ashley Lentz — …and in the winter and in the spring. And so we just kind of moved some of those things.Rich Birch — Yeah.Ashley Lentz — And then, yes, communicated it more clearly. A lot of our stuff happens on Tuesday nights. And so we have told our congregation, come on Tuesday nights. Men’s thing, women’s thing, general classes, dinner, stuff for your kids, right? Like we’ve also tried to make it super accessible. So it’s like, if you don’t know where to start, just show up on a Tuesday night and we’ll help you kind of a thing.Rich Birch — Right. Right. That’s so good. Well, this has been an incredible conversation, Ashley. I feel like I’ve got a page of notes here that is super helpful for me. There’s lots of other stuff I’d love to talk about, but I know you got other things to get to. So we’re going let you go. Just as we wrap up, any final word you’d have to say for us or anything you’d like to say just as we close today’s episode?Ashley Lentz — I would just encourage listeners, like what you’re doing is great and continue ask to ask yourself and the people that you’re around, like what are they looking forward to? So many times we try to do things, like I live in church world, right? Like this is my frame of reference. It’s really when I start listening to the needs of other people that we really start gaining some traction, right?Ashley Lentz — So I would just encourage them, like what you’re doing is great. Keep going… Rich Birch — So good. Ashley Lentz — …and ask your congregation what what they need and and what they want. And then just clarify that for them.Rich Birch — So good. Well, thanks so much. If people want to track with you or track with the church, where do we want to send them online?Ashley Lentz — Yes, LutheranChurchOfHope.org is our like landing page website.Rich Birch — Perfect.Ashley Lentz — From there, you can find our West Des Moines campus. You can find all of our other campuses. You can find out what you need to know at LutheranChurchOfHope.org. And I’ll be on our staff page and happy to connect with anybody further. My email, I think will be in the notes, but Ashley.Lentz L-E-N-T-Z at HopeWDM.org.Rich Birch — Perfect. Thanks so much, Ashley. Appreciate you being here today.Ashley Lentz — Thanks, Rich!

Dave Miller, leader of Leadership Pathway and an advocate for young church leaders, discusses the importance of developing future ministers through two-year residency programs. He emphasizes that Gen Z is distinct and must be treated as an 'unreached people group,' requiring a fresh approach to leadership. The conversation highlights the need for churches to slow down and prioritize meaningful relationships over productivity. With a focus on nurturing young talent, Dave shares insights on innovative leadership development and the transformative impact of investing in Gen Z.

In this special rushed episode of the unSeminary Podcast, Rich unpacks the biggest nonfiction book launch in history: Alex Hormozi’s $100M Book Launch. Alex didn’t rely on TikTok trends, billboards, or mass media. Instead, he orchestrated a carefully choreographed campaign that leaned heavily on email — sometimes sending seven to nine emails in a single day! So what can your church learn from this? I pull out three big lessons that every church leader should pay attention to: Campaigns, Not AnnouncementsMost churches think one announcement is enough. It’s not. Hormozi’s strategy shows us the power of multi-phase campaigns that build intrigue, reveal value, and lead to action. Over-Communication Beats Under-CommunicationChurches often fear “sending too much.” But Hormozi proved that variety and frequency cut through noise. Different voices, tones, and urgency hooks kept his audience leaning in — something we can apply to big days like Christmas or Easter. Compete in the Attention EconomyIn today’s distracted world, you can’t whisper and hope people will hear. Novelty, mystery, surprise — even Guinness World Record-style stunts — keep people engaged. Your church can adapt this mindset to make invite moments more compelling. I hope this episode helps translate these lessons into practical steps for your church, so you can strengthen your communication, deepen your invite culture, and move more people toward Jesus. A Next Step for You If you’re ready to sharpen one of the most important five minutes in your weekend service, don’t miss the Hosting Coaching Clinic … a six-week training designed to dramatically improve your service hosting. Each week includes actionable video lessons, best-in-class hosting examples, and tools to eliminate awkward moments, refine your “ask,” and boost engagement. Use the code ALEX at checkout to get 50% off. This is the perfect next step to put these communication lessons into action. Click here to enroll today IMAGE NOTE: No, I haven’t met Alex. The banner image is AI-generated and intended to serve as a pattern interrupt, following Hormozi’s style.

Taylor Scott-Reimer, a writer and advocate for women's voices in the church, shares her insights on creating inclusive spiritual communities. She discusses the importance of asking for women's perspectives and the quiet struggles they often endure. Taylor presents a three-step framework for reclaiming women's voices in church: reframing narratives, restoring practices, and rediscovering their significance. This engaging conversation encourages churches to embrace women's stories and facilitate open discussions to foster genuine inclusivity.