unSeminary Podcast

Thanks for joining us at the unSeminary podcast. In this episode of the unSeminary Podcast, we’re joined by Danny Anderson, Lead Pastor of Emmanuel Church in Indiana, and Rachel Long, founder of the Joshua Center. They share their story of navigating a significant transition when Rachel moved from being the Executive Pastor at Emmanuel Church to working full time for the Joshua Center, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting grieving children and families. Is your church facing the challenge of a key staff member transition? Wondering how to handle leadership changes in a way that honors both the individual and the mission? Tune in as Danny and Rachel discuss the importance of fostering a healthy organizational culture where open communication and support can thrive, especially during times of transition. It’s okay to talk about transitions. // Staff transitions can feel threatening for church leaders, which often leads to avoidance and breakdowns in communication. Conversations about change should be welcomed—not feared. Leaders must create environments where team members feel safe to explore God’s calling without being met with suspicion or disappointment. Create safe, coaching-based conversations. // As an employee, be open and honest about what God is doing in your life. As a pastor or church leader, embrace your role as a shepherd, not a gatekeeper. Regular check-ins, prayer, and coaching allow conversations about transition to evolve organically over time, giving both parties space to discern God’s will. When staff members sense they are truly supported, they are more likely to leave well and continue to champion the church’s vision from a new place. Each departure is a culture shaping event. // Team members are always watching how transitions are handled, and poor exits can instill fear across staff. By proactively discussing what it means to leave well, leaders can model open-handedness and reinforce a healthy organizational culture. Without surrendering their staff members to God, church leaders open themselves up to feelings of offense and betrayal, leading to toxic staff transitions. Work through the gap. // When a key leader leaves, the gap is real—but it’s also a chance to elevate others. What follows a staff transition is one of the indicators of how good a leader was. Danny shares how Rachel’s former direct reports stepped up and excelled, thanks to her development and empowerment. A well-prepared team can carry the mission forward, even after a major transition. Follow where God is leading you. // For anyone sensing a shift in their calling, follow God’s leading with courage and integrity. It’s your responsibility to be authentic and follow God’s leadership in your life first. Don’t wait until you’ve made up your mind to speak with your pastor. Engage early, pray fervently, and seek wise counsel. You’re responsible for obeying God’s voice, not for managing your pastor’s emotional reaction. Start the conversation now. // If you’re a lead pastor, assume someone currently on your team needs to have this transition conversation. Don’t wait—create the space. Even dedicating a staff meeting to discuss how to leave well can set the tone for a more open and trusting culture. To learn more about Joshua Center, visit them on their website at www.joshuacenter.org and reach out to Rachel Long here. You can follow along with Danny Anderson on Instagram @dannyanderson23 and check out the Church Growth Unleashed conference at churchgrowthunleashed.org and the podcast here. Listen to previous unSeminary podcasts featuring Danny Anderson or Rachel Long: Big Dreams, Healthy Rhythms: Avoiding Burnout in Growing Churches with Danny Anderson Increasing the Impact of the Serving Experience on Volunteers with Rachel Long Moving a Fast Growing Multisite Church from Centralized to Decentralized Leadership Structure with Rachel Long Danny Anderson on Assuming the Leadership of a 29 Year Old Church When He Was 28 EXTRA CREDIT // Staff Exit Debrief Template This episode is all about leaving well — and we’ve created a practical resource to help your church do just that. Whether you’re a lead pastor, executive pastor, or team leader, the Staff Exit Debrief Template gives you a clear framework for holding honest, honoring conversations when someone transitions off your team. It helps you celebrate their contribution and capture valuable lessons to strengthen your culture going forward. This downloadable doc is included inside unSeminary Extra Credit. Members can access it here. Not a member yet? Join today for instant access to this resource and more tools to help you lead smarter: unseminaryextracredit.com Click here to join unSeminary Extra Credit and get instant access to this resource and more! 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. Really looking forward to today’s conversation. It’s going to be a really helpful one. You know, over the years I’ve had people reach out and say, Hey, you should talk about this thing that we’re going to talk about today. And frankly, I’ve resisted talking about it because I haven’t known what to talk about and how to kind of refer to it. We’re talking about team transitions today, and specifically two people that have been on the podcast before who used to work together that are now leading in two different organizations. And we’re going to talk about what that looked like.Rich Birch — We’re honored today to have, again, Pastor Danny Anderson with us. He’s the lead pastor of a great church, Emmanuel church, a multisite church with seven campuses, if I’m counting correctly, in Indianapolis, Indiana plus an online, a number of microsites. They’ve repeatedly been been one of the fastest growing churches in the country. And ah Rachel Long, who was one of the executive pastors there. In 2022, she founded the Joshua Center that we’ve talked about before, a non-profit bereavement center for children and families. We’re going to link to all of that so that you can find their two organizations. But welcome to the show, again, Rachel and Danny, welcome. Glad you’re here.Danny Anderson — Thanks for having with us, Rich.Rachel Long — Thank you.Danny Anderson — It’s an honor. Rachel Long — Yeah.Rich Birch — Why don’t we start with you, Rachel? Kind of give us a little bit of, tell us a little bit of your story. Talk to us about, you know, remind people that maybe don’t listen to every single episode. I know for my mom… Rachel Long — For sure. Rich Birch — …she, she will have listened to every episode, but not everyone listens to every episode. So ah tell us a little bit about you and your background again.Rachel Long — Sure. Well, I started at Emmanuel Church after a season of being a developmental therapist. So I’ll start with the Emmanuel piece. About 13 and a half years ago I started working in Emmanuel, but before that I Emmanuel had been my church for 10 years. And I was a key impact team member there and both the students and in the children’s area. And so raised my kids there. I am married for 26 years and have three kids a girl and two boys. And so we had been at Emmanuel for years and years and so getting to work there was certainly an honor and a privilege. Rachel Long — And in, like you said, in 2022 I started just part-time, you know, just part-time working founding the Joshua Center. And it is a bereavement Center for grieving children, adolescents and their families in Greenwood, Indiana and ah it grew faster than it’s we call it unfortunate growth, right? Like it’s bereaved children. Rich Birch — Right. Rachel Long — It’s not something that I’m like trying to raise the bottom line on. Rich Birch — Yes. Rachel Long — But so… Rich Birch — Let’s increase the amount of breathing children. No one wants to set that KPI. Rachel Long — No, no, no. However, I will say I’m happier that they’re here than the than with not getting help.Rich Birch — Yes. Good.Rachel Long — So my husband and I launched Joshua Center. It is in honor of my little brother that we lost in ’05. And when that happened, there was ah really nothing for my children. And then specifically speaking to grief, I had a highly negative encounter with a therapist. Now I will say this, my church was there for me every step of the way, my small group was. So they helped me get back on my feet and keep moving. However, I needed more mental help with it too. Rachel Long — And so I went into what’s called delayed grief. And I don’t wish that on anyone. And it was about seven years of like… Rich Birch — Oh, wow. Rachel Long — …if I heard the word Josh crying and like there was no hope and healing. And that’s what Joshua Center is really all about, helping those families find hope and healing. That’s why we exist. And so it grew and grew and grew and I was spending evenings and Saturdays here at Joshua Center. Rachel Long — And there just came a crux, a time when it was time to talk to Pastor Danny and he had set the stage. And I mean, just 30,000 foot view, it we were able to talk through what was going on. It took a little while, which is fine. We didn’t want to rush anything. I loved Emmanuel and would never cheat my church. And so. But Danny loved me and so he didn’t want to cheat me. So there was a lot of support there.Rachel Long — So that’s like, uh, just a little snapshot of what has happened to us recently. And so over the past three years, it doubled the first year and has already doubled again since leaving, since my leaving of Emmanuel in October. So it’s more than doubled, but not tripled yet. So. Although thats that’s, again, not great news. There’s kids with grief, loss, and trauma that we’re working with. The the good news is is’s that they’re receiving faith-based interventions. So.Rich Birch — Cool. Danny, why don’t you fill in the picture about Emmanuel again for folks that that haven’t, you know, that would that would haven’t listened to your episodes or don’t track closely with you who kind of tell us a little bit of that story.Danny Anderson — Yeah, you know as you mentioned, you know we’re a multisite church in central Indiana, and I took over as the lead pastor in 2006 for our founding pastor and made it through that transition barely. And you know since then, you know we’ve we’ve been building a great team. God’s been so gracious to us. Rachel’s been ah a part of that from the beginning.Danny Anderson — And yeah, it’s just been a ah fun journey to figure out the multisite strategy and reaching people. And our passion is to see people come to Christ and grow in Christ. You know, we we say we’re on a relentless pursuit of people who are far from God. And you know it’s pretty simple vision. And we try to you know basically use our campus model to to fulfill that vision. And so, yeah, I’m here with Rachel because, you know, she decided it was a little bit less than a year ago to to part ways with our church. And and that has been probably the best transition we’ve had so far off of our team. And we were and we were really super intentional with that. So, yeah… Rich Birch — Yeah. but Let’s talk about that. Danny Anderson — …that’s where we’re at.Rich Birch — Why don’t we start with you, Danny? Like I I feel like so many times these transitions don’t go well. You know Rachel was a senior leader, executive pastor in your organization, and from your seat as the lead pastor, why do you surmise that that these transitions maybe don’t necessarily always go well. You know what why am I hesitant to even talk about this? What is you know what why is why do I feel anxiety about today’s conversation, Danny? Talk to me about that.Danny Anderson — Yeah, I, you know, I think it’s a hard thing because senior leaders, man, they’re, we’re weird people. We are control freaks, we, we, ah we like we think we own people sometimes. They’re they belong to us. You know, we don’t want to talk about or even think about departures. It’s it’s just it’s uncomfortable conversation. You know sometimes we think we’re going to do the ministry with the same people forever. Rich Birch — Right.Danny Anderson — So we we function in that and that idea, which is not true. But I think I think a lot of it the tension around this topic comes because there’s no, kind there’s no, there is no communication. And I would say the first, the the first thing that helps that we’ve tried to do, Rachel and I have seen it. We’ve been together so long. She was together with me for seven years on the leadership team, but on staff for 13. We’ve seen three or four or five, six scenarios that just did not go well. So we’re, you know, we had this conversation like, how do we fix that? I don’t want that culture. Rich Birch — Right.Danny Anderson — I want the type of culture where we love each other so much, we respect each other so much that it’s okay to leave our team without there being hurt feelings or a feeling of betrayal. Or and so how do you do that? And the first thing that that we discovered is that you have to start the conversation.Rich Birch — Right, right.Danny Anderson — I have and it starts with the senior pastor…Rich Birch — Right.Danny Anderson — …you know…Rich Birch — You’ve got to you’ve got to lead. You have to kind of like even I would imagine even that’s a gift of even saying, hey, like we want to kind of be counter cultural on this thing here. Like we want to be open to having that conversation as opposed to giving off, like people can read that a mile away where it’s like if you ever leave, I will cut you. Danny Anderson — Absolutely.Rich Birch — You know, like so even just being open, ah you know, to the conversation, I think is is that’s a big deal. Rachel, what about you?Danny Anderson — And it starts it…Rich Birch — Oh, sorry.Go go ahead there, Danny. Danny Anderson — Yeah, sorry. Rich Birch — What were you going to say?Danny Anderson — No, I was gonna say and it it starts with get really giving permission to have the conversation and letting your team know that it’s okay for them to communicate with you. Rich Birch — Right that’s good. That’s good. Danny Anderson — And that you’re for them in in that ah because you’re on their team and you want what’s best for them. And so that is what I think kind of triggered the I guess the openness on Rachel’s part, but that that’s the only thing I wanted to jump in on.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Rachel, from your perspective, kind of unpack a little bit of what was going on in your mind and heart. Obviously, this was growing. And then it it looked like, okay, it’s going to reach a tipping point here. How did you you know, how did you kind of try to keep that conversation open? And what would you suggest to other people to try to broach that conversation?Rachel Long — Sure. It is what Pastor Danny said. Before any of this happened the stage had been set by saying, like, I don’t know why people just throw a two week notice at us and walk out the door. If they have transitions in their life, like he is our pastor first. So he wanted to help us work through that. Rachel Long — But and honestly, um I would love to say like, oh, I was so self aware that this happened this way. But the truth is being in close connection with Danny, like he knows I would have worked both jobs until like we celebrated that at my funeral. So, uh, that being said, he, he also was still there as my coach. So I was open and honest about like, Hey, this is growing. Hey, I’m working these nights. Hey, I need, I need to talk to you about this in my check-ins. And then there was coaching, just like there was coaching when I led the first church adoption for Emmanuel. I still have my coach with me all the time in it.Rachel Long — So it wasn’t ever like this chomp. It was more like, okay, I’m feeling this. Okay. Let’s separate and pray about it for a couple of weeks. We come back. Okay. This is happening. Then he went on a study break. And so that gave us more time to think and pray and come back and talk about it. And it wasn’t, it wasn’t an abrupt quit and it wasn’t a quiet quit. It wasn’t, he helped transition me off of staff and launch me into what God was building in our lives. And I think that takes a leader that has a bigger than themselves vision, like a kingdom mindset. And it takes an employee that um that knows that even though it’s going to be hard and you’re going to have to make space for the conversations, you got to tell the truth when you know it, as soon as you know it.Rachel Long — Yeah, I would say that um there was also some coaching around that too, like, okay, let’s look at this. Because at that point, your pastor’s looking into your life as this third party, you know, and but still with you in it. And they’re able to see some things that maybe you aren’t able to see. But none of it would have happened if I worked under a spirit of fear or like as an employee, if I didn’t feel psychologically safe to say what I needed to say, then that…Rich Birch — Okay. Let’s talk about that issue. Because I don’t think there’s any—this is a part of, I think, with the tension in this—I don’t think there’s any lead pastor out there that believes that they’re cultivating an environment that is psychologically unsafe. They all say, every lead pastor, and I love the lead pastors who are listening in, everyone, we all believe that we create these positive work environments that actually, of course, just come to me, tell me anytime I’m happy to. But that isn’t actually what happens. Rich Birch — When you think about Danny’s leadership, and then Danny, I’m going to ask you kind of the mirror of this question. But when you think about his leadership, Rachel, what was it that indicated, Oh, he actually means this. Like he actually wants to have the conversation. He doesn’t just say, Oh, let tell me, cause I think there’s lots of pastors that would say that. Oh no, come and talk to me. But actually everyone knows now that isn’t what we should do. What was it about Danny’s leadership that led you to believe, oh, he actually wants to engage on this conversation. He’s not he’s not scared of this.Rachel Long — Oh it’s future behavior is predicted by past behavior. The only time that we’ve had issues that were significant in departures, there was always a chance for that individual to leave well. There was always a chance.Rich Birch — Right.Rachel Long — There was always an opportunity for that…Rich Birch — They chose not to for whatever reason.Rachel Long — Yes, you’re correct.Rich Birch — Yeah. Okay. Yep.Rachel Long — You also have to be the employee that knows that like you’re not working for a robot. You’re working for a pastor. Like they love their congregation. And so when you come to them with something hard, if you got to give them space to be a human too. I mean, like but you can’t just expect, oh, that’s what you want to do here. Let me write a a plan with you. I mean, there is back and forth.Rachel Long — So I feel like I watched the behavior. I mean, when my brother died, he and his wife drove an hour and a half to go be at the funeral when I was one of his volunteers in youth ministry.Rich Birch — Right.Rachel Long — That’s not a person who’s going to say: Get out. This is dumb. What are you doing?Rich Birch — At your desk!Rachel Long — Like you’re fired; get out. Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. Rachel Long — You know, like that’s nobody’s taking a cardboard box with me when you when you have invested so much. As an employee you invest a lot in the church, but also your leaders are investing in you. And so he’d already invested in me, why would he not want to see like a kingdom return on that investment?Rich Birch — Yeah.Rachel Long — That was that’s how I felt safe in it.Rich Birch — Sure.Rachel Long — Because it was always about me more than my product.Rich Birch — Right. Danny, I’d love to hear your perspective on that. Like the, you know, a part of the tension in, in these, I think in these transitions to be, obviously I was kind of kicking lead pastors there, but the reality of it is our, we’re consumed with the mission. We’re like, man, what we’re doing is, you know, is so important. And for, and I know you weren’t the founding pastor, but you, you’re a long time pastor, long term, long time lead pastor. It’s even more so with founding pastors. And I’ve said this to many founding pastors. I’m like, they, you care the most about this. This thing started in your living room.You know, and, and they, the thought that anyone else would ever want to transition. It’s not that they’re evil people. They just are like, love the the vision so much and the and our mission, there you cut them and they bleed it. And and so they give off, ah inadvertently, they give off this like, if you even think about it, I am you know I’ll be disappointed in you. Are there are there things that you’ve tried to do actively to try to cultivate a trust environment, to cultivate you know a ah place where people would be willing to kind of reach out and talk about it?Danny Anderson — It’s a great question, Rich. I think that we’ve learned that each departure is a culture shaping event. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.Danny Anderson — And so if you, how did you handle the how how did you handle the last staff departure? Because staff members talk to each other they’re observing they’re watching… Rich Birch — Yep. Yep. That’s true. Danny Anderson — …and so they’re they’re actually learning the culture of whether or not it’s safe to talk about these things from the last experience. Rich Birch — Yep.Danny Anderson — And so I I after two or three poor, you know, departures. I’m like, man, um I think we don’t we don’t have a healthy culture. We don’t have a we don’t have a culture where, so I’ve got to change that. How do I change that? Well, you know, the the only way I knew is is to start having the conversation with people. And in my mind, I had to make a shift um from these people don’t belong to me, they belong to God. Danny Anderson — I am I have to be open-handed with Rachel. Every senior pastor has has to be open-handed with their staff. They do not belong to me. But that’s really difficult because, especially if someone on your leadership team like like Rachel was such an integral part of everything we did at this church. I mean, she had her fingers in everything, almost. And, which was a good thing. And so when she and it even when she initially shared with me what she was feeling, I bucked it. I’m like, oh, no, that’s not true. That’s not what the Lord is doing. Rich Birch — Yes. Danny Anderson — You know, we got to rethink this. Rich Birch — Yes.Danny Anderson — You know, I’m not sensing that. You know, but so even when I told her that, I even felt after that conversation like, dude, who do you think you are? Like you’re not, you don’t own Rachel. And of course, the Holy Spirit was working on me. And and and so I had to I had to repent of that. Like, OK, Lord, these are like this this staff is your staff.Rich Birch — That’s good.Danny Anderson — And I’m more interested in what you are calling them to do in their life… Rich Birch — That’s good. Danny Anderson — …than how they can help me to fulfill the vision of Emmanuel. And so I think a big decision is to decide in your heart to be open-handed with your staff… Rich Birch — That’s good. Danny Anderson — …and give literally surrender them over to God. Rich Birch — That’s good. Danny Anderson —And I know that might sound mushy, and but but that is ah that is a conviction that you have to have. Or else you’re going to get mad. You’re going to get ticked off.Rich Birch — Right. Yes.Danny Anderson — You’re going to feel betrayed. And then you’re going to once they share it with you, you’re going to be like, OK, well, your last day is Friday. You know you you you’re screwing me.Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.Danny Anderson — So you know let’s let’s get you out of here as fast as possible.Rich Birch — Let me bite back at you or whatever. Yeah. Danny Anderson — Oh, man, it’s so so toxic.Rich Birch — Yeah. Now let’s double click on that, Danny. I’m glad you brought it up because I’m I was like, there’s there were had to have been a moment where where, I’ll put it this way, it would have been natural at some point to have thought, no, I want to steer this conversation back to, let’s serve Emmanuel. Like, you know,Rich Birch — Talk to us about that internal tension. How, what did that look like? How did you wrestle through that? And then, you know, then you probably, obviously you came to a place where you’re like, no, like, obviously I think this is probably the best for, for, for Rachel. And then ultimately the best for us. Like we, you know, we got to believe that the Lord is working this out somehow. Talk us through what did that transition look like? I’m assuming at some point you wanted to kind of steer that conversation back. How did you kind of weather that as a leader, Danny?Danny Anderson — Well, I definitely tried. And and and that was part of what Rachel said. We we had several conversations, and we created space in between those conversations to… Rich Birch — Yeah, great. Danny Anderson — …you know I would I would say, hey, I think we could work this out. I don’t think it’s coming to an end.Rich Birch — Yep.Danny Anderson — You know let’s let’s let I gave her some thoughts. I gave her some ideas. And then I let her have space to pray about it with her husband. And and so but then when I realized you know that that the burden that God had put on her heart for children who’ve lost loved ones and the experience that she had with her own brother, like this this is the work that God is doing in her life.Rich Birch — Right. Right. Yeah, that’s good.Danny Anderson — And I if I stand in the way of that, I’m I’m blocking, you know, what God wants to do in her life. And I don’t want to be that guy.Rich Birch — Yes.Danny Anderson — And so I think I finally got it took me a while to get there, honestly. Rich Birch — Right. Danny Anderson — Because there is, Rachel knows this, there’s a lot of work to be done and where would it’s not a, so I did feel that like, oh gosh who’s gonna pick up who’s gonna pick up all the work that she’s leaving behind? Rich Birch — Right. Right. Danny Anderson — And so there was a bit of that you know, I guess the space, there’s a void there that t was left. But you know I had to trust God with that. You know like, okay, Lord, I’m going to trust that you’re going to provide other people. And other, you know. Rich Birch — Yeah. Danny Anderson — So I just didn’t want to be that person that was blocking what God was doing in her heart, if that makes sense.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. I love that. I hope you’re listening in, leaders, today. I think what you’re leading us here, Danny, with even just the way you’re you’re reflecting on that. Rich Birch — Rachel, what about you? How did you continue to lead? And you’re doing this in today’s conversation. So I’m I’m asking you to kind of think about this at a meta level. My my experience has been that you have continued obviously to honor Danny, to honor his leadership, to honor the place that you know he has had in your life and has in the community. Talk to us about some of those decisions, actions that you took through this process to continue to you know to honor the the place that that Danny’s had as a pastor and leader in your life.Rachel Long — Wow. I don’t I don’t know that I could fully honor all that he taught me there. Every single day I have some leadership piece that I’m like, yes, I learned that at Emmanuel. I learned that from pastor Danny. But I will say something that I would want all senior pastors to hear that he did was, if I can, is that the beauty of how this transition went is like, I got to serve at Christmas at my church. And people were coming up to me asking me how my, the number one thing is how’s your project going? I love that. But how’s it going? How’s it… like people genuinely wanting to know how Joshua Center is. Rachel Long — My son got to keep his youth group. My other two are adults and they live on their own. But my son, who’s still a junior in high school, gets to gets to still go to youth group and not feel awkward. So basically we got to keep our church because of this. So deciding early on that like, when when I left, there were two ah new multisites in the and the pot. They could choose which one was going to come next, or, you know, or based on how attendance and and things like that go, and availability of other churches to adopt. Rachel Long — And so leaving feeling like okay, I’ve left our left my church in a good spot because it wasn’t just my pastor, it’s my church… Rich Birch — Yep. Rachel Long — …and I served there for ten years before I left. So really keeping focus like I want to honor Danny, but I want to honor Jesus. Rich Birch — Right. Rachel Long — I mean when I meet with him every morning if if at any point during this conversation I would have felt like I No, you did what, this was Abraham and Isaac moment. You did what I asked you to do. You don’t have to give up your job at Emmanuel, which by the way, I loved and still love my church. Then I I would have gone back and said… Rich Birch — Right. Rachel Long — You know, I think I was wrong. Oops. You know…Rich Birch — Sure, sure.Rachel Long — And I know there would have been grace and space to talk it through. But I think continuing to seek God’s will in it and and take the steps allows me not also to be a saboteur for for Emmanuel which I would love to see them reach, us – I’m still part of that’s still my church. Rich Birch — Yes. Yes, yes.Rachel Long — Like so I would love to see us reach our 12 campuses. That’s that’s still in my heart. And I think that’s something, I’ll stop in just a sec. I think that’s something the senior pastor needs to know is you’re still on vision, even if you’re in a different capacity.Rich Birch — Yes.Rachel Long — I live to see people come to Christ and grow in Christ. Rich Birch — Yep.Rachel Long — I’ve gotten to lead two kids to Christ in the counseling room with their parents there. Like there don’t negate that like that person might still be on vision, even though they don’t get the privilege of being on staff anymore.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.Danny Anderson — Absolutely.Rich Birch — Yeah, I can I can say that I’m I’m also attending a church that I was on staff at. And I’m like a volunteer. I was about to say just a volunteer, but I’m you know, I I actually it’s a privilege and honor to and I’ve you know, it’s fun to like stand back and be like I am a cheerleader and excited for that and excited for, you know, our leadership as we continue to move forward.Rich Birch — Danny, what about you? What happened to the Rachel-sized hole in the organization? You know, like, you know, when a senior leader like this leaves, that that does create, you know, you’re being kind, but that can create a bit of chaos in the organization. Because it’s like, okay, well, every my experience has been, and I’m sure this is the case with Rachel, the little bit I know her. She’s incredibly competent and you know there in some ways the organization ends up getting built around these people. That you know that we kind of end up we massage the org chart and it’s like there really is one person that could do this job. Their name’s Rachel Long and that’s normal. I don’t think that’s bad. That’s a normal part of this process.Rich Birch — So what did what did you do? How did the organization shift? What happened? Because I think it’s actually an interesting opportunity to think about it more from the positive side. Hey, we can make some changes here. We can look at this in a slightly different way. What happened in that you know, after Rachel stepped out?Danny Anderson — Yeah, so we’re in that right now. Still, it hasn’t been that long. So I think one of the indicators of how good a leader is, is what happens when they leave. Rich Birch — That’s good. Danny Anderson — And you know, Rachel had three people that were reported to her directly: Allison, Aaron, and Cody. And those three people carry a ah heavy heavy lift across our entire church. And she led our church basically through them and others, but those were the three the three big players. And so those those team team members report directly to me for now. And it’s actually been it hasn’t been easy but it’s been it’s been delightful to learn like, okay these guys, like Allison’s incredible. Aaron Beasley’s a hustler, and you know Pastor Cody will do he’ll he’ll run through a wall for you. And so Rachel has she did there is a gap but there’s people there that are able to do the work. So so right now, I I have stepped into her role. It’s temporary until we until I can find another executive leader, but it hasn’t been chaos. It’s like, holy cow, what’s going on?Rich Birch — That’s good.Danny Anderson — It hasn’t been that way. And so, Rachel, I don’t know if I haven’t had a chance to tell you this, but they those guys are killing it. And and I… Rachel Long — I love it. Danny Anderson — …and I attribute that to you training them, empowering them, building them… Rich Birch — That’s good. Danny Anderson — …giving them confidence. And so, ah yeah, it’s it’s it’s pretty cool right now what’s going on.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. The the way I hear that, it Rachel, is that he replaced you with three people. That’s the way I hear it. But you know. The work that used to be done by Rachel is now done by three people. That’s what I hear. Rich Birch — Rachel, kind of pivoting in a slightly different direction. It’s related, but it’s kind of in the neighborhood of this conversation. Let’s say I’m on staff at a church. I’m, you know, just give me a picture, a church of 1,500 people, maybe not quite as large as as you guys, but and I’m thinking, I’m thinking maybe I should reach out to my lead pastor. Maybe I’m an executive pastor. And I’m like, I’m I’m, I’m thinking the Lord might be leading me to this.Rich Birch — I had someone recently say this to me and they were like, what should I do? Um, should I go and, and there’s probably more than two options, but should I go and start having, should I talk to Vanderbloemen first, or should I go and talk to my lead pastor? You know, what help us through that, navigate that conversation.Rachel Long — Sure. Well, the first thing I think that you have to remember in this, as an employee, is it’s your responsibility to be authentic and to be following God’s leadership in your life first.Rich Birch — That’s good.Rachel Long — It’s not your pastor’s responsibility to make sure you’re following what God has led you to do. And you’re not responsible for your pastor’s reaction to what you’re going to say.Rachel Long — I think if you come in there, like Joshua Center was never an exit strategy. Rich Birch — Right. Rachel Long — So if you come into a situation and you’re like, Hey, I’ve got this exit strategy. I’m ready to, I felt this way. I’ve talked to these head hunters. I’m ready to go. I mean, that is one way to do it, but you have to understand you’re choosing a corporate path. You’re not choosing a church path. And so, although we have a business to run inside a church to be good stewards, we are not a corporation in that manner. Rich Birch — Good. Yep.Rachel Long — So there has to be space to prayfully consider it, seek wise counsel, like you would for anything as an executive pastor. And then you have to have the courage, the courage is in the telling.Rich Birch — That’s good.Rachel Long — And then knowing that you’re telling this to a human, that you could be hurting them… Rich Birch — Yep. Rachel Long — …and God’s plan could be hurtful to them. So leave space for that. Rich Birch — Right. Rachel Long — You would leave space if you were counseling a couple and you had to tell them something hard.Rich Birch — Yep.Rachel Long — You would leave space if you were telling something hard to an employee you manage. So, I mean, pastors are people. Your lead pastor’s a person. But you have to act in your own integrity in it. Rich Birch — Right.Rachel Long — And and I wouldn’t say that I did that perfectly. I would say that there were pieces of the coaching that were super helpful to bring clarity. So if your pastor is for you and they’re seeking God’s will for like their staff, then then you’re going to get some more clarity in this.Rachel Long — Because we always think like, oh, it could go so terribly wrong. But what if it goes…Rich Birch — What if it’s a go terribly great?Rachel Long — …like hard, but good. Yeah.Rich Birch — Yes.Rachel Long — Yeah. Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah.Rachel Long — It doesn’t have to be easy. This has not been easy. I miss my staff every day.Rich Birch — Yep. Yep. Yeah, that’s good.Rachel Long — Every day.Danny Anderson — We miss you too.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s good coaching. Because I think there are people who sit on this conversation and and are thinking like, hmm, you know, like, I don’t know, like I’m I’m feeling, I’m sensing the Lord might be moving me on, but I just don’t know what to do with that feeling. I don’t know what to do with that sense. And…Rachel Long — Sure.Rich Birch — and yeah, I think having the bravery to say like, Hey, I want to talk about this. But then also giving space. I think that’s a good word there, Rachel, like giving space to be like, Hey, this may not go well. This may be, and that’s okay… Rachel Long — Yeah.Rich Birch — …but just because it won’t go well, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. Rachel Long — YeahRich Birch — Danny, what about you? So you yeah maybe there’s a, maybe you’re a lead pastor and you sense that there might be somebody on your team that is thinking about this. And maybe it’s just through, like, this is a unique situation because, you know, Rachel had, which I understand, folks that are listening in. Rachel had been working on this. It’s obviously an incredible passion project. And so in some ways you could kind of see that, but what would you say to a lead pastor who sees something like this bubbling in their team with a senior leader, somebody, you know, like an executive pastor type person?Danny Anderson — Yeah, I mean, I think that senior leaders, can they have an intuition about this stuff. You can see you could see some things ahead, otherwise you wouldn’t be the lead pastor.Rich Birch — Right. Yes.Danny Anderson — And so I think you when you when you sense that, I think it’s it’s appropriate to start the conversation… Rich Birch — Right. Danny Anderson — …to initiate the conversation and let the person know on the front, I am for you personally.Rich Birch — Right. Right.Danny Anderson — I am I am I am more passionate about you as a person than the product you produce for the church. And and you have to mean that and in in the core of your being. And that’s hard because we’re pastors, as you’ve already mentioned, Rich. We’re so focused on the work product and the productivity and the loss of the productivity, if this person should leave. And who’s going to fill that gap? And that’s going to cause, you know oh my gosh, do we have enough money? Like what where we… Danny Anderson — There’s all kinds of things that that happen. But you have to you have to get in a mental space, in a spiritual space, where it’s like, Lord, I care about this person. I truly want to shepherd them through this process. And I want to be for them. I want to help i want to help them. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Danny Anderson — God, if you have something else for this person, let me be part of helping them get to that space.Rich Birch — Right. Danny Anderson — I mean, and that’s our jobs as pastors. We’re we’re trying to take people from where they are to where God wants them to be… Rich Birch — That’s good. Danny Anderson — …in every aspect of their life. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Danny Anderson — And so why would that be any different for Rachel or anybody else on my team? It’s like, hey, let me be part of the solution with you. I love you. And, and so that. And now if you’re not there, you got to get there. Because that’s the ball game.Rich Birch — Right, right, right.Danny Anderson — If you, if if that’s not true about you, you’ve got to kind of mature into that space. And, you know, I don’t know what to say to a person who’s not in that space, you know, other than you got to get there.Rich Birch — Right, right. Yeah, that’s good. Well, and it feels like um this, if you’re a lead pastor listening in today, or you’re any, we’re using that as the framework, but it could be any, so any person that oversees people. And you suspect that you don’t have the kind of relationship where someone would come to you, that that’s the place to start. It’s like, oh, okay, we’ve got to have a lot of that. What’s it like to be on the other side of me conversations? Danny Anderson — Oh yeah. Rich Birch — How, how can I grow? And what, you know, how can I serve you better? And what, because if you sense that your people aren’t, are so afraid to talk to you about this, then it’s like, we’re on a whole bunch of fronts, we’re losing already, right? We’re already behind the eight ball and we’re not able to, you know, necessarily live out the vision that God’s called us to. That’s good.Danny Anderson — Rich, I would I would also say, I know we’re coming down to the stretch here, but I would also say the pastors have to understand that that fear is there. It is there.Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.Danny Anderson — So it’s not like, is it you don’t have to wonder, it’s just there. Rich Birch — Yes. Danny Anderson — So you have to be the one to to to alleviate that. Rich Birch — That’s good. Danny Anderson — And I would even go as far as to say that senior pastors should teach should do a staff development on this with their team. Rich Birch — Yes. Danny Anderson — Like devote a whole staff meeting. Like, hey, I’m gonna I’m gonna do 35 minutes of teaching on how do you leave well from our organization. And here’s my heart on the issue. And that, I mean, just coming from you in a staff meeting, that would be so, that’s setting the culture. That’s not gonna solve it necessarily, but it’s definitely gonna make it a little bit easier ah to that conversation. Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, that’s so good. We wedid an interview a number of years ago with Jesse DeYoung from Flatirons. And they, Flatirons had a moment where um they actually asked their people if they would like to step off their team. Danny Anderson — Wow. Rich Birch — They provided, it was they kind of, it was during COVID and they they said like, hey, we would like, and I forget the number, but it was like 30 or 40% of their staff raised their hand and were like, yes. And that led them to this massive cultural change that they that they led through. And it was like, it was a a concrete moment when they realized, oh my goodness, there’s a large portion of our people would prefer not to work here than to work here. And but now on the back end of that, and they would say, man, God has used that transition. Rich Birch — And I’m not saying you should do that, but but that idea of us going first and leading and raising the hand and saying, hey, we want to make this the best place for you, the healthiest place for you to to work at, which in this case, in the context of this conversation means you should be able to raise this conversation and not be in fear of it. That’s so good.Rich Birch — Well, as we come down to land, um why don’t we do kind of last words, Rachel, what would be your last piece of advice? Maybe for somebody from your seat that’s sitting in an organization thinking the Lord might, you know, have something for them. What would you say to them? And then Danny, same thing. But then the reverse of that from your seat.Rachel Long — Well, this is going to be a churchy answer. You need to pray through this. You need to fast over it.Rich Birch — That’s good. Yep. Rachel Long — You need to seek wise counsel… Rich Birch — Yes. Rachel Long — …and you need to do what you know you’ve been instructed to do in your own life. Because again, you don’t know if this is Abraham and Isaac moment, or you don’t know if this is Esther – at such a time as this. You don’t know. So and then I would say engage your leadership as soon as you can. I would have probably, if I had it to do over, have engaged even sooner with my leadership because… Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. Rachel Long — Engage them as soon as you can.Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s a good little piece of advice there. Like, Hey, that’s a good nugget here at the end of that. Like if anything, default towards early is, you know, the way I would say that. Let’s get the conversation out there rather than, you know, don’t get so far down the road that it’s like, you’ve already decided you get one foot out the door. Let’s have the conversation early. That’s good. I like that. Rich Birch — Danny, what about you from, from your seat as a, as a lead pastor?Danny Anderson —Yeah, I mean, just a closing thought. I again, I guess I’ve already said this, but you know put put your people in God’s hands. They belong to him. They’re not yours. They’re, God has loaned them to you for a period. Everybody’s an interim pastor. My friend, Shawn Lovejoy says that. And so hold them loosely, love them well. And when it’s time for them to move on, be their biggest advocate. You know, just go go to bat for them and honor them. You just can’t go wrong with that. Danny Anderson — And then I’ll the last thing I’ll say, Rich, is that for for senior leaders listening, ministry leaders, executive pastors listening, I guarantee you, guarantee you right now on your team, there’s two or three people that need to have this conversation, right now.Rich Birch — That’s good.Danny Anderson — And not and they’re not having it because they don’t have permission.Rich Birch — Right.Danny Anderson — And so I would I would act immediately… Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Danny Anderson — …and because it’s it’s real. And so anyway, just put that little thought in people’s minds there. They need to take action quickly.Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s a good nugget again, a great nugget at the end here. Hey, like the next all staff meeting, we should be talking about this. I should, I should reference this. You know, we need to create this kind of culture. That’s, that’s fantastic. Well, this is great. Rich Birch — Rachel, where do we want people? We’ve got past episodes we’ll link to that you’ve been on. But where, if people want to get in touch with you, kind of track with what you’re up to these days, where’s that? And then the same with you, Danny. Where do we want to, what do we want to let let people know about on on each of your sides? Start with you, Rachel.Rachel Long — You can go to joshuacenter.org, very simple, joshuacenter.org. And if you want to email me rachel at joshuacenter.org, you’ll find everything we’re doing there and what the organization is about, upcoming events, information, everything’s there.Rich Birch — Love it. What about you, Danny?Danny Anderson — Yeah, you guys can check check things out on Instagram @dannyanderson23. I also have a podcast, Church Growth Unleashed. Rich, you’ve been ah an honored guest on that podcast. And also just wanted to let people know that we’re doing a leadership conference, Church Growth Leadership Conference in September. And Rich, you’re gonna be there. Rich Birch — Love it. Looking forward to it.Danny Anderson — It’s very, very exciting. You’ll be one of our breakout speakers. So if people are interested in that, they can find that at Church Growth Unleashed. I think there’s a new website that just came out for that. So yeah, it’s pretty exciting.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. That’s churchgrowthunleashed.org. You should check that out. It really will be a great, it’s gonna be a great conference. The lineup’s amazing. Except for me, somehow I squeaked in. So I’m excited to be there. That’ll be fun and to be there for sure. Rich Birch — So thanks so much, friends. I appreciate you being here. Thanks for what you’re doing and just want to honor you for the good things that have happened in this transition. Take care, friends.Danny Anderson — Thank you, Rich.Rachel Long — Thank you.

In this discussion, Eric Smith, founder of Hope City Church and co-creator of SermonDone, unveils how AI can revolutionize sermon preparation. He emphasizes that 83% of churchgoers choose their congregation based on the quality of teaching. Eric explains how SermonDone helps pastors personalize their content, saving time without sacrificing theological integrity. By using a personalized profile, the tool learns each pastor's voice, allowing for authentic messages. This innovation not only accelerates research but also boosts engagement in the preaching process.

Aaron Stanski, the Founder and CEO of Risepointe, brings a wealth of knowledge about aligning church spaces with mission-driven growth. He discusses how healthy churches are expanding and challenges leaders face with facilities that may not keep up. Stanski introduces the 'constraints framework,' probing churches to identify potential bottlenecks before growth occurs. He emphasizes strategic planning for future needs and highlights the importance of proactive leadership in navigating construction challenges, ensuring that churches are ready for the exciting journey ahead.

David Ashcraft, CEO of the Global Leadership Network and former Senior Pastor of LCBC Church, shares insights from leading a multisite church that grew from 150 to over 25,000 attendees. He emphasizes the importance of a clear vision in guiding growth and aligning leadership. David details the challenges of maintaining stability while innovating and introduces the 90/10 rule for effective decision-making. He also discusses the vital role of summits in empowering church leaders and cultivating transformative experiences within their communities.

Let’s face it: talking finances can be uncomfortable, but it’s a critical conversation, especially in multisite ministry. Today, I’m tackling one of the toughest—and most essential—questions in multisite: How do we fund, sustain, and scale financially healthy campuses? Throughout our All About Multisite series, I’m providing practical answers every Wednesday and hosting insightful interviews with leaders from thriving multisite churches on Thursdays. Now, let’s dive into the details of multisite financial strategies to help you avoid costly pitfalls. Episode Highlights: Choosing the Right Financial Model: About 71% of multisite churches use a centralized budgeting system. Personally, I advocate for this “one pot” approach to avoid unhealthy competition between campuses. An alternative is the “central tax” model used by churches like Community Christian, allocating funds with clear percentages (70-20-10) to campus operations, central operations, and expansion. Determining Financial Sustainability: Only 7% of campuses break even at launch. However, by year two, 53% achieve financial sustainability, and by year three, this number climbs to 79%. Aim to become financially sustainable by year three. If you can’t foresee a clear path to sustainability after two years, you likely need to adjust strategy quickly. Increasing Generosity Without Campus Competition: Teach stewardship church-wide regularly. Integrate new givers from day one, making generosity part of the volunteer onboarding process. Promote transparency with your finances, regularly communicating budgets, needs, and successes openly. Conduct unified generosity initiatives, reinforcing the message that every campus contributes to—and benefits from—shared success. Hidden Launch Costs to Anticipate: Many campuses underestimate startup costs, typically averaging around $200,000, significantly higher than the average church plant ($25,000). Be aware of hidden costs such as increased insurance premiums, custodial fees, additional equipment for rental venues, and expenses related to being a generous tenant (meals, facility improvements, etc.). Staffing Costs and Strategies: Staff your new campus based on projected attendance, typically one full-time equivalent staff per 75-100 attendees. Consider central staff requirements. Plan for roughly one central support staff for every three campus-based staff. Key initial roles often include a campus pastor, worship and kids ministry coordinators, tech support, and a connections director responsible for guest assimilation. Balancing Economies of Scale with High Standards: While multisite launches tend to cost more upfront, aiming for economies of scale is crucial. Launch effectively but economically to increase your potential for future growth. Portable setups are typically more cost-effective initially, with organizations like Portable Church Industries providing significant long-term savings through efficient equipment solutions. Practical Tips to Implement Immediately: Clearly define and communicate your financial model to all staff and volunteers. Regularly evaluate campus financial health quarterly. Prioritize generous transparency in all financial communications. Invest strategically in initial equipment and staffing to balance immediate needs with future scalability. Don’t let finances stop your multisite vision. Equip your church for sustainable growth, keeping your ministry thriving long-term. Additional Resources: Join our upcoming webinar: “Why Most Multisite Churches Stall Launching and How to Keep Growing.“ Explore more multisite insights in the Spring 2025 issue of EXECUTIVE PASTOR digital magazine available now.

Thanks for joining us at the unSeminary podcast. In this All About Multisite month podcast episode we’re talking with Omar Giritli, Lead Pastor, and Carlos Cardenas, Executive Pastor at Christ Fellowship. With campuses spread across Miami, the Caribbean and South America, Christ Fellowship has truly become a model of how to lead a diverse, multi-generational church with a powerful mission. What does it take to lead a multisite church with a global reach? Tune in as Omar and Carlos share how they’ve developed a robust leadership pipeline, fostered a culture of empowerment, and navigated the unique challenges of international church planting. A leadership development culture. // Leadership development at Christ Fellowship is not an option—it’s a requirement. Each staff member has annual goals, and one goal is always centered on developing other leaders. Staff are encouraged to delegate responsibility, not just tasks, helping others grow into influential roles. Their internal development program, “Level Up,” formalizes this process, encouraging team members to train potential successors—redefining success as equipping others to step into greater leadership. Raising up leaders from within. // Recruiting from outside rarely works in Miami. The cultural uniqueness of the city—especially its heavily Hispanic influence—means long-term success requires deep contextual understanding. One of the secrets to Christ Fellowship’s healthy culture is staff longevity. Many leaders—including all members of the directional leadership team—have been with the church for over a decade. This consistency creates visible pathways for growth and strengthens team culture. Staff can look up and see real examples of advancement built on trust, integrity, and commitment to the local church. Global campuses, local DNA. // When Omar stepped into the lead pastor role, he reevaluated the church’s missions giving strategy. Rather than sending money to organizations with little oversight or visibility into outcomes, Christ Fellowship decided to launch and support its own global campuses. This strategic shift allows for greater accountability, stewardship, and relational investment. Each campus receives support in leadership development, sermon content, graphics, and operational tools, resulting in a globally unified movement that shares one vision, one strategy, and a recognizable culture. Building global campuses. // When establishing international campuses, some of the relationships have been mergers with dying churches. Other times Christ Fellowship begins with small groups led by an identified local pastor. These pastors are mentored and assessed for alignment with Christ Fellowship’s vision and theology. Once critical mass is achieved, a public launch is held with leadership support from Miami. Ongoing training and support. // Launching an international campus can fail if the global campus pastor does not share the mission and strategy. Christ Fellowship maintains strong relationships with global campus pastors, providing regular Zoom training, creative workshops, and even hosting an annual global leadership conference. This depth of investment ensures that international locations mirror the Miami experience in quality and culture—despite contextual differences. Missional generosity fuels growth. // Local outreach is just as important as global expansion. Through Caring for Miami, Christ Fellowship operates mobile markets, dental clinics, and clothing buses to serve under-resourced communities. The result? People give more generously—not because of flashy campaigns, but because they see their gifts changing lives in tangible ways. You can learn more about Christ Fellowship at www.cfmiami.org and follow them on social media @cfmiami. For local outreach updates, check out @caringformiami. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live! Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you’ve decided to tune in during this All About Multisite month. We’re having conversations, getting behind the scenes with some prevailing multisite churches. And to be honest, I’ve been looking forward to this conversation for a long time.Rich Birch — Excited to have a couple of leaders from Christ Fellowship. This church was founded in 1917 to impact Miami by helping people and their families follow Jesus. Today, Christ Fellowship really is a model church, a church you should be following, multi-generational, multicultural, international church with multiple locations. I can’t keep track in Miami, the Caribbean, Latin America, and online. We’ll get to how many later. Excited to have Omar Giritli with us, ah lead pastor, and Carlos Cardenas, the executive pastor and leads the directional leadership team. Welcome, guys. So glad you’re here.Omar Giritli — Hey, glad we’re here.Carlos Cardenas —  It’s good to be here. Yeah.Omar Giritli — Absolutely.Rich Birch — This this is going to be good. Why don’t we start with kind of filling out the picture a little bit. Omar, kind of fill out tell fill out the kind of the picture. Give us a bit more kind of on the bones of that description that I gave there.Omar Giritli — Yeah, you know, we we are a church here in Miami that really even started before 1917. We’re the oldest church in Miami. In fact, our downtown campus opened a day before the city of Miami was incorporated.Rich Birch — Wow!Omar Giritli — And so we have a long, rich history here in Miami. Our downtown campus, back in the day, you know, sent sent off the the Palmetto Bay campus back in 1917. And ah that grew, God you know really showed a lot of grace to our to our church here in the Palmetto Bay area. And from there on out, we kept growing. The downtown campus, which was Central Baptist Church, became us, or like our sending church, merged with us. And so now we have five campuses all throughout Miami-Dade County in the different key regions in Miami. And then we also have ah campuses all throughout kind of Latin America, the Caribbean, and South America.Rich Birch — Wow. Well, we’re definitely going to get to that ah today.Rich Birch — Carlos, why don’t you tell us little bit about your story? How did you get connected to the church? You know, oftentimes the the great thing about, people understand what lead pastors do and they talk about executive pastors. It looks different in every church. Give us a bit of a profile. Talk to us a little bit about where you spend your time.Carlos Cardenas — Yeah, absolutely. Well, it’s good to to be here with you, Rich. And I actually have been on staff for 15 years already. And when I transitioned, when I came to Christ Fellowship for the first time, I actually started as a volunteer. I was a volunteer, worship ah member. I was, well, still played music, but I was a musician, played a keyboard, was part of band directing and things like that. And so I started as a volunteer and I became an intern for just a couple months, like three months. But right when I became an intern, a couple months later, I was was I was given the opportunity to come on staff as a worship director at one of our campuses.Carlos Cardenas — That being said, throughout the years, you know, with other previous leaders, you know, I’ve been able to be developed as a leader, you know, and growing my leadership, growing my not only knowledge of God’s word, but knowledge of, you know, ministry life and and all that. And so I’ve had several positions here, from being a campus pastor, to eventually, you know, being the pastor of campuses. And then um became officially ah an executive pastor, you know, our, our lead pastor, Pastor Omar, he became the lead pastor in 2019. And a couple years after that, you know, um, the previous executive pastor was only here for a season. It was just a transitional thing and I would become a successor. So officially I became an executive pastor of Christ Fellowship about two and a half years ago. Carlos Cardenas — So it’s been ah a fun ride. I mean, you know, I’ve learned a lot. I’ve made a a lot of mistakes and but but it’s been interesting and it’s just been a great experience to to learn the ins and outs of multisite, of ministry, of being in a city like Miami. You know, ah there’s there’s challenges that we have that other churches, other cities, you know, you may not come across these challenges. So, but it’s been ah it’s been an interesting and a good, really good experience, healthy experience overall.Rich Birch — Love it. that’s That’s so good.Rich Birch — Omar, you were talking earlier that you started as a part-time role at the church as well. To give us a little bit about your history, because this is, I think, super you know fascinating. Here’s two leaders leading at a senior level in a really influential growing church. Talks about how your journey from where you started to the role of lead pastor.Omar Giritli — Right. So, you know I was you know, I was going to the University of Miami. I went to I was going to be an attorney, actually. And so, you know, I got i was going to be an accountant and then I and then went to law school. And between my first and second year of law school, I felt like God called me to the ministry.Omar Giritli — So I decided, felt like God called me to ministry, but I decided just to finish off law school. And so after law school, instead of going to the law profession, I literally went to I started working at Christ Fellowship. Rich Birch — Love it.Omar Giritli — And I started working as an intern um during law school. I was not an intern at a law office. I was an intern at church. And and when once I graduated, ah by the grace of God, there was an opening here at CF, and it was a very entry level you know, position in small groups ministry. I was an intern in the student ministry. Then I came into in the small groups. Omar Giritli — And then from there on out, kind of my journey is very kind of very similar to Carlos. I was a ah small group associate. I became the small group director, small group pastor. Then it became, then I transitioned to a campus pastor later on. Then I became the director of campuses. And then after that, there was a season where I kind of was doing executive pastor role without the official title. But then eventually, ah yeah, then eventually I just transitioned into the lead pastor when our former lead pastor, Pastor Rick Blackwood, transition retired. Rich Birch — Love it. Omar Giritli — But we both had a very similar similar journey. Rich Birch — Yeah, that I love that. And that speaks to, we were joking about this ahead of time, your reputation as a church is you have like a great robust leadership culture. And, you know, have done a great job but um kind of helping people develop and helping, you know, your people develop people.Rich Birch — Carlos, talk to us a little bit about maybe at a staff level, at when you’re encouraging your staff to develop. I think this is one of these things that all of our churches, we say we want to do, but it’s actually very hard to operationalize. What does the developing of particularly volunteers look like for the team at CF?Carlos Cardenas — Yeah, absolutely. We we definitely try to create ah and cultivate a dynamic and an environment where there’s a lot of leadership development that takes place. Not only do we encourage that, we it’s part of our goals. So every year at our church, we, our staff, we have about four to five, sometimes six, you know, goals that we want to accomplish. And one of them always has to do with leadership development.Rich Birch — Love it.Carlos Cardenas — So, you know, you have your attendance, you have like small groups, you have volunteers, which is great, right? But one of them always has to do with developing a leader. And so, and so it is it is the norm here to to empower volunteers, to empower other staff members to do some of the some of the responsibilities that you’ve been entrusted with.Carlos Cardenas — And one ah jokingly, I always tell people, listen, ah we don’t want Superman leadership here. Like, we don’t want you to be a Superman and do it all, right? Like, you’re the one that’s going save the world, and you’re the one that’s going to save the day, and you’re the one that’s going to know all the answers. No, we want to be able to delegate and empower as much as possible. Rich Birch — That’s good. Carlos Cardenas — You know, if you, you know, I heard Andy Stanley many, many years ago share, if you, you know, delegate tasks, you’re just going to create followers. But if you delegate authority, you’re going to create leaders. You’re going to develop leaders. And so that is very, you know, as part of our culture, you know, something that we talk about often. And and we’ve actually throughout the, so, a lot of the leadership of development, ah some of it happens sort of organically, right? Because it’s the culture and you’re bringing alongside alongside someone with you. You know, when you go into a meeting, you’re, you know, you bring someone just to be a fly on the wall so they can hear how the dynamics of that meeting goes. You know, people that you entrust, right? Second Timothy 2.2, you know, entrust into reliable men who will entrust into others, you know, entrust into people that you’re going to, you trust and are are competent and have the character.Carlos Cardenas — But throughout the years, ah several years ago, we actually formalized our leadership development process and we call it Level Up. So it’s like you’re leveling up someone ah to take on more leadership and possibly even taking on your position. Rich Birch — Oh wow.Carlos Cardenas — And so I know at times people can become insecure because they’re like, oh, my gosh, is this competition?Carlos Cardenas — You know, I’m leveling up this person and then they’re no longer going need me. But vice versa. We we actually ah reward those who have leveled up someone to take on their position because if you level up someone to take on your position or another one, you’re you’re always going to have a job or a seat in the bus, right?Rich Birch — 100%. 100%.Carlos Cardenas — Because you’re just helping you know God’s mission move forward.Rich Birch — Yeah.Carlos Cardenas — And one of the things that will will will be a hindrance to the mission that God has given us as a church is lack of leaders. Omar Giritli — Yeah.Carlos Cardenas — You know if you don’t have, you you can have the the resources. You can have the venue. You can have the finances. You know you can have even like the volunteers. But if if you if the Lord provides a campus for us, right? And we don’t have the right campus pastor or the the right person to lead that campus, then guess what? It’s it’s going to create a a lid or it’s going to create a barrier into what we want to do in the future. Carlos Cardenas — And so not not only do we encourage it, Rich, but we we make it part of our goals to to you know that you are required to develop someone or develop leaders.Rich Birch — That’s good. We’ll come we’ll come back. I’d love to talk about Level Up, kind of the formal program, what does that look like in a minute.Carlos Cardenas — Sure. Sure.Rich Birch — But Omar, let’s talk about the culture side a little bit first.Rich Birch — How do we develop, before we just jump to a program, how do we develop a culture? How have you been seeing the culture encourage at CF around leadership development? It’s that nuance. It’s that caught versus taught thing, right? Somebody can get up and say, hey, we got to develop leaders, but it’s a whole different thing when it becomes a part of who we are. What does that look like? How have you been able to develop that culture, Omar, at the church?Omar Giritli — You know, I I think just to like what Carl’s saying, I think, you know, you know we I think part of it is that, you know, we have a a system in place. And I think part of it is, is the the the the, when our staff looks up to the leadership of the church, not only Carlos and I, but even like our directional leadership team and our campus pastors, I can’t even think of one person we brought in from the outside.Rich Birch — That’s good.Omar Giritli — So what happens is, is anybody that’s in our staff and looks up in the organization, they, you know, they, they can, you know, you know, they can see, wow, if I stick around it long enough, if I’m faithful, if I work hard, if I’m a man of a woman of integrity… Rich Birch — That’s good. Omar Giritli — …if if I do what is asked of me and I’m faithful, what Ii have to do, there’s always opportunity for me here at Christ Fellowship. I, you know, I’m not a big fan of bringing people from the outside. Rich Birch — Yep. Omar Giritli — And really, the few times that we’ve done it, it’s very expensive, and they don’t last. Rich Birch — Yep. Omar Giritli — Good people, they just, they just don’t last. I mean, it’s they they’re here for two or three years, and they go. And whether, you know, Miami is very different. Miami is very Hispanic. I mean, little you know, you cross a Broward line, which is a county above, you know, Miami-Dade. And it’s it’s it’s a very unique place. It’s it’s it’s a very unique place. There’s a lot of, you know, Hispanics. It’s a melting pot of South America. And so there’s a lot of things going on here that, honestly, it’s not it’s not for everybody.Omar Giritli — And so um so usually people just come and they’re here for just a few years and it’s not even us. It’s sometimes the cost of living, and the people, and you know the i just they just rather go somewhere else. But the people that stick around for long-term are all people who’ve been here 10, 15 years.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.Omar Giritli — I think, if you think about it, like between Carlos and I, we’ve been here both over 15 years. The directional leadership team, every single person has been from 35 years to somebody else is probably like, all of them are over 10 years in directional leadership team here within CF.Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.Omar Giritli — The campus pastors, for the most part, have been here easily six, seven to 10 years. So what happens is you start looking up the organization and at any young intern, any young staff member entry level position, they see you know, we can talk a lot about leadership development and we can talk about, hey, but where the proof, you know, where the proof, you know, the proof is in the pudding, right?Rich Birch — Yes, yes.Omar Giritli — Look up and everybody here are people that have been here for a long time. So I think that in itself screams, you know, you know, you know screams, um says a lot more than anything we could ever say.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.Omar Giritli — And I think people recognize that. And I think um the people that ah that are in our staff are here. And the truth of the matter is you want people that you raise up because not only are they they, they, you know, you know, you, they know, you you know who they are. You know that they love the Lord. They understand how we operate as a church. They understand our history of our church. But the reality is that they also love our church. There’s a deep passion not and love, not only for the Lord, but for our church, our church family. Rich Birch — Yes.Omar Giritli — And so I think that’s, you know, you know you can have all you can have all the leadership development pipelines and strategies in your in your church. But if the top people are not longstanding people that have developed through the ranks, it’s it’s kind of like you’re you’re you’re preaching something, but it it’s doesn’t really come to fruition, you know?Rich Birch — Right.Carlos Cardenas — You’re not you’re not modeling you’re not modeling we’re not you don’t not be modeling what you’re preaching what you’re what you’re you know vision casting for.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s a good insight. You know, and and there’s no doubt, you know, Miami obviously is a unique place, but every part of the country tells the same story, which is like, hey, this part of the country is just different for one reason or another.Omar Giritli — Sure. Right.Rich Birch — And it’s everybody’s convinced that they’re, but you know, that is obviously true in Miami. And you can see that where, you know, and we I think we get tempted by the cross country hire. We get tempted by the like, oh, here’s a person that was in a similar church and like we can just transplant them into here and like they’ll, but that it really is, it’s the rare person. And I did that. I made the 12 hour move and thought I was going to live there forever. And eight, nine years later, we moved back. I didn’t even think that was going to happen, but there it is.Rich Birch —Carlos, tell us, talk…Carlos Cardenas — And I think, and just to add to what Omar said about it, if you don’t mind if I can just add to what Omar said, because I completely agree with that.Rich Birch —Yeah, yeah, absolutely.Carlos Cardenas — I think when you don’t when the culture is not healthy and it and it it’s in a specific ministry, then you may need to hire from the outside… Rich Birch — Sure. Carlos Cardenas — …like someone that may need to fix you know the ministry or fix whatever area department because the culture is toxic and and all that. But by the grace of God, we we’ve tried as much as we can within the last four to five years, especially when Omar became the lead pastor, to, to make sure the culture is healthy. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Carlos Cardenas — Like we work hard at trying to, you know, you know, reward people, you know, care for them, celebrate them, and encourage them. Omar Giritli — Yeah.Carlos Cardenas — And I think one of the biggest mistakes that people but fail in ministry is that they don’t want to let go of responsibility. They don’t want to like, and we are all about like, man, releasing, here’s an opportunity for you. You’re young, whether intern or yeah or a volunteer. I mean, we have volunteer staff that that and we hold accountable to.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.Carlos Cardenas — Like they we hold them accountable. They go to staff meetings and they’re volunteers.Rich Birch — Love it.Carlos Cardenas — Lay men, lay women, you know, that love our church. But, you know, the the I think Omar brought up an excellent point. The high-performing leader stud from across the country, they know a lot, but they they don’t have that love for for the church… Rich Birch — Yeah. Carlos Cardenas — …like like like like someone else who may not be, you know, a five-star, you know, leader, but they they’ll get there. They’ll get there, you know? So, yeah.Rich Birch — Right. Well, yeah and I’ve, so I’ve said in other contexts, like what we do is not rocket science. Like I think sometimes we make it more complex than it is. But the culture stuff—and I love that both of you have hit on this—the love for the church, man, you can’t replace that.Carlos Cardenas — Yeah.Rich Birch — Like the, the, the heart, the heart for the house, man, we love this place.Omar Giritli — Yeah.Rich Birch — You know, God’s changed my life here. I want to be a part of that. That’s a very good, that’s a very good insight.Rich Birch — Omar, pivoting in a totally different direction. As an outsider, Miami seems to be the capital city of Latin America, and your church has is in is taking that mission on very seriously. You’ve done the international campus thing. I’d love to hear more about that, just to put ah in a little bit context for our listeners. The vast majority of multisite churches are, in fact, less than 1% are more than an hour away from the original location. So the fact that you’re doing international campuses, very rare. It just doesn’t, statistically just doesn’t happen.Rich Birch — But I’d love to hear the story of that, Omar. How did you get into that? What’s the vision behind that? Tell us a little bit of that story.Omar Giritli — Yeah. So what happened was when I stepped into this role of lead pastor, one of the things that, and and it was a little bit also when I was doing the kind of the XP role, you know, I was noticing that we would send a lot of money to our, to different mission organizations. And what I noticed was we’re sending a lot of money, and I had no clue what they were doing with that money. Rich Birch — Yes.Omar Giritli — I mean, it was so much money. Yeah. Mission, mission, mission, but okay. Where’s the report? Rich Birch — Right.Omar Giritli — Where’s, help us understand how do we know what how you handle that money? You know, and again, it’s not I don’t think anybody was you know doing anything fraudulent, but there wasn’t any any real, you know, you know, what was the fruit of that? What was the fruit of all of our sacrifice to give to this mission organization, you know?Omar Giritli — And so at some point we we we started we we have like ah we’re supporting some churches in Cuba. And at that juncture, we went to go see them and um the previous um executive pastor before Carlos, ah his name is Jim Tomberlin, you probably know who he is.Omar Giritli — You know, I started thinking myself, why we start funneling all of our missions budget, not just to some random mission organizations that we have no clue how they’re using the money and how effective they’re using that money. But what about if we just plant our own churches? How what about we establish our own churches?Omar Giritli — And these will be churches that have our same mission, vision, strategy. Our same name. Some places would have Christ Fellowship in some Latin American countries where there’s English speaking people. If not, they’re called Familia Cristiana, which is a very similar name with the same low, same thing. And they will be independent churches. They’re not ours, but they’re independent churches that ah we support the pastor. We provide resources, graphics, a sermon. I mean, anything that they they need. And how come, you know, what about we did this?Omar Giritli — So we what we started doing is instead of giving all this money just to some, you know, random mission organization that we don’t know how effective they were being. We know that when we establish, when we plant our church ourselves, we know how to do it. We know that’s going to be effective. And we know that we can, with integrity, I could stand before the congregation and everything that you sacrifice and you gave towards this church, we know what every penny went to. And we, and here’s the proof. These are churches you have started or helped revitalize.Omar Giritli — And it’s been awesome. It’s been awesome because they they, lot of these churches, we plant them and with the strategy, hey, we want to get you off the ground. And you’re free to go. You’re you’re like you’re you’re literally free to go and become your own church if you want to. But most of them just stay with us. Rich Birch — Right.Omar Giritli — They just want to just stay with us really. Rich Birch — Wow. Omar Giritli — And they have a great, great partnership. And it’s been really a really great, a really great thing for us where, you know, we’re able to establish all these churches in all these different places and, and we’re learning and we don’t have it perfected. But if you look at any of these other campuses globally, they’re going through the same series we are. Carlos Cardenas — Yeah. Omar Giritli — Same graphics, same, you know, sermon, you know, same teaching. I mean, It’s kind of funny. Some people have said that they go to these global campuses and they look more Christ Fellowship than some of our local campuses. I mean, they have really taken the identity, our strategy, our logos, pictures, and they’ve own it. They’ve taken ownership of.Omar Giritli — And I think with those churches, when they realize, well, we’re being led by by a church who is not trying to you know be over-controlling, but we’re here, we’re together in this, right? We’re together we’re and we’re and, man, they really appreciate it. So, so yeah, so we have um campuses. I believe we have nine campuses right now um all over.Omar Giritli — We’ve there’s been times that we’ve had 15, 16. There was a moment, for example, in Cuba where we came to a point, we had about six, seven campuses in Cuba that they said, you know, with the political tensions, better if we completely go independent because of everything going on.Rich Birch — Yeah. Sure.Omar Giritli — And so they they went off and they’re still doing great and we love them. They love us. But, you know, that’s, you know, our goal is not having a Christ Fellowship campuses. It’s really establishing and and planting new churches where there are no churches, you know. Rich Birch — Right. Omar Giritli — It’s been great. And I think our people are really appreciate it. Because they really feel that when they give their tithe and their offerings and they sacrifice to give to Christ Fellowship, that we’re really funneling that to to to to further the gospel to all nations.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing.Carlos Cardenas — Yeah.Rich Birch — Could, Carlos, unpack that a little bit. When you say that you guys have planted, what does that typically look like? Like, are you identifying planters in the communities that you’re, you know, that you’re launching in? Talk us through some of the, how does some of the mechanics of that work?Carlos Cardenas — Yes, some of them have been a—great question—some of them have been a church merger, you know, so it’s a church, a church that is, you know, a dying church. And then we’ve so we have a global pastor, you know, and our global pastor is the one who is ah but building these relationships with these men or these pastors, right? And and in those countries. And so then some of them have been of church merger. Carlos Cardenas — Others have started just like we would start a local campus where they start with small groups. You know, we first of all, I identify the leader. So we have the pastor. Then that pastor, I can tell you one campus in Colombia, Villavicencio, this was the their their their pathway. Actually for several of them, on Honduras as well and Guatemala, where they begin ah small groups, right? In someone’s home.Carlos Cardenas — And then they start having multiple small groups. And then they identify a venue. So usually they they lease space, you know. We do help them financially in that in that process. And then from there, we have our our grand our our our launch date, like our grand opening. For the most part, either Omar, myself, will be a part of that. We’ve even done ordinations and in in in some of these pastors.Rich Birch — Wow.Carlos Cardenas — We’ve gone there to do ordinations, like do the whole ordination process and the the ceremony. So it usually starts with identifying the pastor, starting off with small groups, investing and serving the community. And then we have our grand opening launch, launch date in, in, in, in that, in that community, in that city of of of the country that we we go to.Carlos Cardenas — And just to, to really just to kind of add to what Omar shared, you know, there, if you were to go to one of those campuses, it feels like you’re at Christ Fellowship Miami. Like in in the context of that nation, it’s like, oh, like same graphic branding, um you know, even the vibe like guest services.Carlos Cardenas — Because the other thing too, is that our ministry directors here, they spend some time ah developing their leaders there. So for example, Like our creative director will have a Zoom meeting with all the creative leads from all the different global campuses. So you will have like 15 people from all over the country, from all and over the world, right? From all over really South America, and Latin America and the Caribbean. So you have someone from several people from, you know, um Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Colombia, you know, Honduras.Carlos Cardenas — And, and, and we’ll, you know, they’ll still have like a a workshop, you know, on hey here’s, here’s some of the best, you know, common practices when it comes to, you know, graphics and when it comes to, you know, ah videos on social media, think things like that. Right?Carlos Cardenas — And then um not last year, but in 2023, we were going to do it this year, but we had to we we we we pivoted and we’re not gonna do it this year. But in 2023, we had our our first global conference…Rich Birch — Wow.Carlos Cardenas — …where we had about 200 volunteers. Some were staff, but most of them were volunteers from all these global campuses. And we did a full-on conference for them. So we took about 25 staff members, including myself, you know. That included the band. So we took like the bands, you know. Rich Birch — Wow. Carlos Cardenas — We did a full on, you know, main session, like I was able to preach in one of the main sessions. And then we have breakouts, you know, like, it was ah it was I think it was a day and a half. No, sorry, it was a it was a full day of a conference. And then we visited many of the locations that we we had in that in that country that we went to.Carlos Cardenas — So um we not only do we want to provide financial support, like, you know, to Omar’s point, you You know, one thing is to write a check. Another thing is to, like, we’re going to invest in your leadership. We’re going to invest in you as ah as a as a leader, as a volunteer, as a person, as ah as a congregation, as a campus. We’re we’re going to invest in you. We’re going to walk alongside you and… Rich Birch — I love that. Yeah, I love that. Carlos Cardenas — …and tell you, you know, here’s how we do follow-up. Here’s how we do small groups. So we’re one church. You know, it’s it’s just a it’s we call it global campuses. Omar Giritli — Yeah.Rich Birch — Yep.Carlos Cardenas — And and every year, at least once a year, we bring our global pastors together. We have them on stage. They share, you know, we have a video. They share something. We cast vision. We remind, you know, God’s people like, hey, part of your giving, part of your generosity… Rich Birch — Yeah, it goes to this. Carlos Cardenas — …you know, goes to fund these ministries and these campuses that we have in all these different countries. So it’s it’s it’s been very fascinating. Pretty cool experience.Rich Birch — Yeah, when sticking with you, Carlos, ah there may be churches who have had, you know, maybe interest from ah pastors in a different part of the world, or, you know, they might have people that are tracking with them. What would be like ah a pothole, like a thing that you would suggest, hey, watch out for this, because this part of it is the way that it could you know go bad or not go great. Is there something in that maybe you haven’t necessarily directly experienced that, but you could see, oh, hey, this could go bad if we don’t navigate this well in these kinds of relationships.Carlos Cardenas — It always starts with the leader, with the pastor. Rich Birch — Okay, good.Carlos Cardenas — And and I think of it the same way with local campuses. Rich Birch — Yep.Carlos Cardenas — To me, the pastor is everything. Rich Birch — Yep.Carlos Cardenas — We call them campus pastors, global campus pastor. If the global campus pastor is not excited, fully on board, doesn’t believe in the vision, mission, and strategy. We’ve had different meetings where we’ve identified pastors and they, let’s be honest, like they they want to go into in a relationship with us. They want to get some funding… Rich Birch — Right. Sure. Carlos Cardenas — …but we know that their heart is not there. Like they don’t want, they, they, they don’t want to, ah ah you know, and, and contextually we, there’s, there’s certain things that we are, are flexible on, right? Like contextually, you got to tweak couple of things, right?Rich Birch — Sure. Sure. Yep.Carlos Cardenas — Because you you can’t be so boxed in and and we’re not in the States, right? So you have to, you have to also be contextual to the nation that you’re in. But but for the most part, you’ve got to have, you’ve got to adopt our discipleship pathway. Rich Birch — Yep. Carlos Cardenas — You know, our strategy, which is, you know, connecting to God, connect connect to God, connect to others, connect to ministry and connect to the mission. You know, and you have to, you know, doctrine is important, of course. And and understand, like, we’re we’re we’re aligned when it comes to our teaching, right?Carlos Cardenas — Now, are there are there certain weekends that the pastor may have a one-off? Like, you know, it may not do the the not be a part of the sermon series. That’s okay. We we we we have to navigate those tensions, right? Rich Birch — Sure.Carlos Cardenas — But for the most part, they’re they’re aligned with us. So you you got you got to identify the right person. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Carlos Cardenas — It always starts with them.Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s so good. Well, just as we’re coming to land, Omar, as you think about the future, you think about the future of Christ Fellowship and you know campuses, multisite, what what’s on the horizon? Or maybe what are some questions you’re asking as you think about the future as ah you know as a church, as related to this, all the stuff we’ve been talking about today?Omar Giritli — Well, as we look to the future, um you know, I think one of the things that we want to continue just to increase is, um you know, when it comes to here at Christ Fellowship, it’s really our local outreach. Because, know, we’ve been talking about our global outreach, our local outreach here at Christ Fellowship.Rich Birch — Yep.Omar Giritli — And one of the things that um that that really that we’re really just proud of as as ah as an organization ah is that we have two missional arms of Christ Fellowship. One of them is to families, which is Christ Fellowship Academy. We we have a school. Rich Birch — Very cool.Omar Giritli — But we also have Caring for Miami, ah which is ah really a nonprofit that really focuses on reaching the under-resourced and hurting in our city.Rich Birch — That’s good.Omar Giritli — And, man, we have it’s an amazing thing where ah we have a, Caring for Miami does, you know, different things. For example, we have a more a brand new state-of-the-art mobile market that goes through all the hurting parts of the city and people… Rich Birch — Wow. Omar Giritli — …you know, the the Miami-Dade down the the county down donated one of their their buses and we gutted it and we renovated it to be a state-of-the-art market that they goes through all these different hurting parts of the city. Rich Birch — That’s cool.Omar Giritli — And people could go on there shop free of charge. We have a mobile dental clinic that goes to all these different parts and provides free resources, free services to cancer patients, to all these hurting people.Omar Giritli — We have our, we’re just about to launch our mobile clothing market, which is a bus that actually goes to all the same places and people go on there and shop for, and not shop, but pick the clothes they want ah free of charge and and and all that.Omar Giritli — We have a park marketplace. We have a backpack program which gives to children in schools. And so one of the things is that, you know, we need to continue reaching out, you know, being very missional.Omar Giritli — One of the things that, you know, Carlos and I were talking about that part of our our giving has really increased in the last several years. And I think it’s not because we’ve done a great a huge sermon series on giving. We do talk about it you know regularly, and we’re not you know we’re not afraid to talk about giving.Omar Giritli — We’re giving as examples. We’re taught to be good stewards of what God has given to us. But I really do think that when the people of God see the church being missional, whether it’s locally… Rich Birch — That’s good. Omar Giritli — …for example, through Caring for Miami, or globally, really it’s, I think it really motivates people to want to really sacrifice and give towards a mission because they see that what they’re sacrificing for is not just to keep the lights open, but it’s to really reach more people for Christ, not only here in Miami, but abroad.Omar Giritli — And so that’s one of the things that we do. We really want to celebrate what a God is doing through us and locally and and globally. And whether you know we’re you know ministering to a cancer patient through our dental clinic or whether we are planning a new church and do an outreach you know in you know in Costa Rica, they know that, hey, when you give to this church, we might not be perfect, but man, we’re going to be our best, do our best to be the best stewards of what God has entrusted to us through the generosity of God’s people, and and do that. So that’s one of the things that we’re that we’re looking to do as we move forward is continue just to be as missional as possible.Rich Birch — That’s good.Omar Giritli — And and I think our people really buy into that. And they they really their hearts are really behind that because you know we all want to see people reach reach people you know. We all want to see people being reached for Christ, right so.Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely.Omar Giritli — That’s one of the things, you continue to be missional and and and develop leaders because as as people give, as we’re missional, as people give, more opportunities come up, which is that we need to be have the leaders ready to go, you know… Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Omar Giritli — …which kind of ties into the inner circle of like leadership development.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Well, I really appreciate you guys being on today and thank you for letting us look under the hood a little bit. Carlos, if people want to track with the church, where do we want to send them online? Where where should we get to send them to stay connected with what you guys are up to?Carlos Cardenas — Yeah, our website, cfmiami.org. Rich Birch — Love it. Carlos Cardenas — cfmiami.org, yeah.Rich Birch — Love it.Omar Giritli — Yeah, and social media.Carlos Cardenas — Follow you can follow us on social media too, Instagram, you know Facebook, @cfmiami as well. That’s our account.Rich Birch — Nice. You’re going to say something there, Omar, as well?Omar Giritli — Yeah, so our social media handles are CFMiami.Omar Giritli — And then also, if you want to look more and into like our Caring for Miami, which I just mentioned, it’s just @caringformiami.Omar Giritli — It’s on social, on, on, on, and you’ll see it’s like, it’s pretty amazing. Rich Birch — That’s so cool. Omar Giritli — So on our main website, you’ll see us celebrate their global campuses. And then on Caring for Miami, we’ll celebrate all that we’re doing in the community.Rich Birch — Love it.Rich Birch — Thanks so much, gentlemen. I appreciate you being here today. Thank you.Omar Giritli — You got it. Thank you so much, Rich.

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